


this is not the end

by daisysusan



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: (sort of but not really), Future Fic, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Other: See Story Notes, Reunions, Slow Burn, Taking serious problems seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:19:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 105,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28243797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisysusan/pseuds/daisysusan
Summary: After fifteen years, two divorces, and a mildly imploded career, Liam's pretty much given up on the idea of ever doing anything with One Direction. Or he thinks he has.
Relationships: Liam Payne/Louis Tomlinson
Comments: 30
Kudos: 48





	1. am i out of time

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who helped with this: yourblues and oliviacirce for alpha reading and cheerleading and helping talk me through a ton of hurdles, hkafterdark for a superb beta job and telling me my characters need to commit to emotions, and croissantkatie for an extremely speedy and thorough britpick. And because it takes a village: thank you to everyone on my twitter feed who put up with me over the last six months and didn't laugh me out of the room for showing back up in this fandom after eight years like the bet you thought you'd seen the last of me gif.
> 
> Second of all, while I typically consider the "RPF" label as covering all my bases, disclaimer-wise, I do want to emphasize that I'm not making any assumptions about people's internality or actual experiences.
> 
> Third of all, the warnings. Without getting into too much detail here, this fic at least briefly alludes to a lot of things that members of the band have experienced and talked about experiencing. If you've paid a medium amount of attention over the last 5 years, you're probably aware of those things. If not, or you want a more detailed list, go to [the very end of the last chapter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28243797/chapters/69211647#chapter_4_endnotes).
> 
> Fourth of all, here is [a soundtrack](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2SHkW4Jdb4xjMYTPys6WnB) for this story.

In Liam’s imagination, it was never an email from his manager that popped up on his mobile at half nine in the morning on the dot, the notification catching his eye while he’s leaning against the kitchen counter with a cup of tea in one hand and his mobile in the other. He swipes it down without reading the subject line, more focused on whether he’s going to bother eating a proper breakfast or just whatever he sees first in the refrigerator before he sprints out the door. It’s going to be a tight squeeze, getting everything set up for tonight and being back before Lina gets off school. 

Normally he doesn’t have to bother, but it’s a Wednesday so Bear’s with his mum, and Lina, well—

Liam’s halfway through mentally listing all the reasons Lina can’t be trusted alone even for a few minutes, though she’s almost nine, before he actually processes the email he’s been staring at unseeingly.

 _Reunion Show?_ , the subject line says. 

His stomach drops out.

He stares at the screen without managing to read anything beyond the subject line, and then realises with an alarming burst of energy that he needed to leave five minutes ago. He drops his tea, grabs a banana off the counter, and runs out the door. 

The whole day is like that—there’s traffic on the way to the venue, then every possible issue with the sound system, and suddenly it’s past three and Liam’s not going to get home before Lina. He spends the entire drive home thinking about how three weeks ago, despite knowing she can only use it with supervision, Lina tried to use the grill when Bear had gone to his room—Liam thinks he’s got a secret girlfriend—and she’d turned her toast to ash and the fire brigade had come. 

She’d said she was hungry. He’d kissed the top of her head and reminded her about fire safety.

It’s possible he ought to get someone to watch her in the afternoons when he’s got a show and Bear’s with Cheryl, but he doesn’t like the idea of someone else fixing her a snack and trying to help her with homework, even if Liam has to google under the table to make sure his answers are right. 

Luckily, when he opens the door—not locked, and Lina should know better but she’s still just eight—Lina is sat in front of the telly. She’s not meant to be watching it until she’s done her homework, but at least there’s no one from the fire brigade to be seen.

“Hello, darling,” Liam says, dropping down onto the sofa next to her. As a character on screen pulls out a knife, he thinks perhaps he’s banned this show even though Bear loves it, but he spent enough of the day fighting. Better just to give her a kiss and let her snuggle into his side. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you got home. How was school today?”

“Fine,” Lina says with a distracted shrug. “Got good marks on my maths test.” She turns back to her program, eyes fixed on the screen again.

“Well done,” he says. He might stick it to the fridge later, if she’s brought it home with her. 

After Lina does her homework, they barely have time for a takeaway before Liam has to run again. The babysitter shows up a few minutes early, letting herself in as Liam’s putting the last of the food away. He manages to shout at her to help herself to leftovers as he runs for the door for a second time today. At least it’s only a small gig, not a massive thing where it’ll take hours to finalise the setup even after everything they did earlier.

His DJ set goes great, at least. He’s too hyped up to sleep afterward, lying in bed poking at his mobile the way he did when he was nineteen and would get so wired from performing that he couldn’t sleep for hours even when he was exhausted. 

The email is still there. 

It’s just a few brief sentences asking if he might be interested. Something about setting up a meeting. It’s nothing definite, nothing like a promise, but it makes his stomach turn over in ways he’s not used to anymore. It’s been fifteen years. More than half his life. 

Answering emails past one in the morning is the kind of thing he tries not to do anymore, but he types out a message anyway, reading it over before he sends it despite its length. 

_Ill do it._

—

The conference room looks like every conference room in the world: glass walls and black chairs and a speakerphone in the middle of the table. They’ve been the same for as long as Liam can remember.

Looking around, though, that’s odd.

It’s like looking at his kids, he realises after a moment of intense uneasiness. When he looks at his kids, he sees them half-grown, full people with personalities, and also cradled in his arms for the first time, wailing. He can see everyone around the table that way too, all the lines their faces have now, but also the way they smiled when he first met them, uncertain and shy. He has to close his eyes for a moment, resting his hands against the table.

He didn’t hug anyone when he got here, because he doesn’t know how he feels about hugging everyone, much less how the rest of them feel about it. 

There’s a tension that reminds him of the beginning, when none of them knew each other. They don’t know each other now, either, he supposes. No one’s quite looking at each other, and Liam finds himself glancing down at his mobile just to have something to look at. No messages, which means neither of his kids have been sent home from school. There’s that, at least.

“Shall we leave you all alone for a few minutes to chat before we get down to business?” a woman in a jacket and jeans asks them from the doorway, her eyes casting smoothly around the room.

Liam takes a deep breath, considering, but before he can speak someone else is. Louis says, “That sounds great,” and then the woman nods, crisp as her jacket, and closes the door behind her as she leaves. 

The silence that falls is distinctly uncomfortable. Liam has to force himself to look up from his mobile, because he doesn’t really want to look anyone in the eye. 

“Well,” he says, at the exact same time that Louis says, “The quiet game’s not going to get us anywhere, is it?”

He sounds so much like Liam remembers that Liam laughs. He looks around, and Niall’s chuckling, and Harry and Zayn have cracked tentative smiles. 

Louis sets his hands down on the table, looking, if not businesslike, then as close to it as anyone ever has while also looking like he hasn’t brushed his hair in a week. It’s longer than Liam remembers it being in the band, but not the longest he’s ever seen on Louis. “It was my idea to look into this, so I suppose I have to be the one who says my piece first, don’t I?”

Liam’s not surprised, really. The email hadn’t named names, just said that the possibility had been raised, but he’d had a guess. Niall would’ve said something to him directly, and it didn’t feel like Harry, and Zayn—well. He was more surprised to have got the email at all, and he’s surprised that they’re all in this room, sitting stiffly around a generic conference room table.

“Suppose you do,” Zayn says. Liam allows himself a moment to let his eyes rest on Zayn, the careful way his hair is styled and the way that, even now, Liam can see the tension in his shoulders. Then he turns to hear what Louis has to say.

They’re all looking at Louis now, actually. Louis shrugs, the one he does when he’s being self-deprecating and feels a little unsure. Liam knows the gesture intimately. 

“I was feeling a little nostalgic a few months back,” Louis starts out, pausing to take a deep breath. Liam wants to hug him, or put a comforting hand on his back, urges that have been buried for so long that their sudden return is disorienting. He’s barely seen Louis in years, but some things are just in his bones, he supposes. 

Across the table, Niall nods.

“And I knew it was coming up on twenty years since we got put together,” Louis continues, “and it seemed like it might be a good time to at least talk about trying out a reunion gig. And you all agreed, I suppose, since you’re here.”

Niall has half a smile on his face. “Just a gig?” he says, “or just a gig to start?”

Louis’s responding grin is maybe the first expression that hasn’t looked forced since Liam got here. “Just a gig to start, but it might go well.”

Liam smiles despite himself. At the other end of the table, Harry is nodding.

“Could be fun,” Harry says. Niall shrugs once, and then nods. Liam forces himself not to immediately stare at Zayn.

“I’m not promising anything,” Zayn says, low and controlled. “I need some time to think.” He swallows visibly. “But—”

Harry catches his eye. “But you’re here,” he offers. 

Zayn nods. “But I’m here.”

They’re all quiet for a few moments after that. There’s a knock at the door. It’s clear that people were waiting for their conversation to be over. Glass walls and all. 

From there, it’s all business. Liam ought to pay attention to the discussion of potential plans and all the moving pieces—contracts and schedules and everything else—but it’s surprisingly hard to focus on anything but watching the others around the table. He can’t quite stop himself thinking of them as _his_ lads. 

Zayn is sitting up almost perfectly straight, his hands in his lap. A few seats down, Harry is nearly sprawling out of his seat, somehow nearly as lanky as Liam remembers him. He looks entirely relaxed, except that he’s been fiddling with his mobile since all their people came back into the room. Niall looks like he’s actually paying attention, more or less upright, and he notices Liam watching him, throwing him a quick smile. Louis is sat closest to Liam, slumped in his seat without actually looking relaxed at all. 

It’s not that Liam doesn’t want this, because if he didn’t have any interest he wouldn’t be here, but it feels like two completely separate parts of his life are about to collide, and he hasn’t the faintest idea what it’s going to be like.

The last time they were all together like this, in the same room with a common goal—the thing is, Liam doesn’t remember it, because he didn’t know it was the last time. Everything was a blur then, the days and the months too much alike to really distinguish themselves in his memory. It was easier to let the blurring happen than to try to keep each day separate. 

He’s startled out of his thoughts by the light brush of his publicist’s hand against his shoulder. The meeting is over, evidently, and he has no idea what happened in at least half it. 

They all shuffle out more or less together, splitting off to talk to their respective people but exchanging a few smiles with each other as well. Some of the tension seeps out of Liam’s back when he gets into the elevator and it’s only him and his publicist, but as the doors are closing a hand slips in between them, sending them back apart, and Louis steps in.

“Hi,” he says. No one is with him, and Liam feels a bit standoffish, all surrounded by business people. He’s got his shirt tucked in, and Louis looks like he just rolled out of bed. If Liam didn’t know him better, he’d doubt that Louis had even brushed his teeth. He did shave, though, so Liam’s got an idea that, maybe, Louis isn’t feeling entirely casual about this either. Liam’s stomach feels like it’s full of rocks.

“Hi,” he says, and then, “Been a while.”

“Too long,” Louis agrees. He’s got his nervous smile on, and he’s bouncing on the balls of his feet, all barely-contained energy. His hands are shoved in his pockets, but Liam would bet he’s fiddling with his own fingers. “I—” he starts, and then he looks at Liam and says, “Oh, hell with it,” and pulls him into a hug. 

Liam laughs, helpless, and winds an arm around Louis’s back. “S’good to see you,” he says. He squeezes tight for a moment before he lets go, which is only a split second before the elevator dings and the doors open.

Outside the building’s glass walls, there’s a lot more paps than Liam is used to seeing. He keeps a fairly low profile these days, and he can’t say he’s missed the wall of flashbulbs going off. He should’ve expected it—anywhere Harry goes, after all, and Niall and Zayn are hardly anonymous these days. 

And, of course, all of them are together. That’ll be all on all the news sites within the hour, if it isn’t already. 

“Christ,” Louis mutters next to him. “Haven’t missed that.” He blinks rapidly a few times, then purses his lips like he’s contemplating saying something mean. He doesn’t, and Liam’s stomach twists as he remembers when Louis would have absolutely said it. They’d have sniggered together about it, heads tucked too close, and that would’ve been the picture on the papers the next morning.

They’re shepherded into the car park quickly enough, dark and quiet. Liam’s got no idea where Harry and Niall and Zayn are, but he’s not their keeper. Maybe they wanted their pictures taken for more than a handful of seconds.

“Right,” Liam says. “I suppose that’s me, then.” He gestures in the general direction of the car he hired for today, already idling as the drive waits for him.

“Come for a drink with me,” Louis says, instead of goodbye, and Liam startles.

He doesn’t realise he’s going to say, “Yes,” until the word is out of his mouth, before he’s even thought about whether it’s a good idea. He can always beg off early on account of his kids if it comes to that. He’s left Bear in charge of Lina for the afternoon, and that’s something of a risky proposition after a few hours.

Still, it’s hard to feel too bad about it when Louis is smiling at him in a way that feels sincere for the first time all day. For the first time in about a decade, really.

“You want to ride together?” Liam asks. “I hired a car for today. It felt like the thing to do.”

“Might as well,” Louis says. “No use dealing with parking if I can avoid it.”

Louis knows a pub not too far away, it turns out, and he swears it’s the kind of place where they won’t be bothered. He knows the owner, calls him a good lad twice even while Liam’s trying to tell him it sounds great.

It happens again in the car a few times, talking past each other when the nervous energy is too much, but Louis was right. The pub’s a quiet kind of place, plenty of dark corners without being too grotty. The service is quick, the beer is cold, and the chips are hot. It’s early enough that it’s not crowded yet, if it ever gets crowded.

“I’ve played a few gigs here,” Louis says once they’ve settled in. 

Liam tilts his head, mildly surprised. “I thought you didn’t—you know, perform much these days.”

Louis shrugs. “I don’t much,” he says. “Just things like this, the owner doesn’t make a fuss over it but it’s nice to get up on a stage sometimes. Helps with the writing, too.”

“It does,” Liam says, nodding. He takes a long pull from his drink. “What’s it like, writing for other people?”

“Different,” Louis says with a wry laugh. “It’s, I dunno, it’s a fun challenge. You have to get really outside yourself, let yourself see it all through someone else’s eyes. It’s cool, especially when you nail it and you can see how it all fits together.”

“I got so used to writing for my own voice,” Liam says, shaking his head. He shoves three whole chips in his mouth because he can’t think of anything to say, and because it would be a shame to let them get cold.

Louis waves his hand dismissively. “You’ve got like, all that stupid range, though. Like writing for a whole group when it’s just you.” He furrows his brow thoughtfully and takes a drink. “The hardest ones are definitely the ones I can barely even sing the notes to myself.”

Liam can’t even imagine. He shakes his head again, just once. “I’m glad you like it,” he says.

Louis’s smile is softer now. “It’s good. Quiet. I do it here or in LA, most of the time. Makes it easy to spend time with Freddie.” Liam can’t say he’s not jealous of the seeming simplicity of that. “I do miss being on stage sometimes,” Louis admits.

“You were the one who suggested a reunion tour,” Liam points out.

“Reunion gig,” Louis corrects, but he’s laughing for real now. The tension’s mostly gone out of his shoulders; Liam doesn’t know if it’s the alcohol or the way they’ve settled back into familiar conversation instead of the terse formalities from earlier.

Liam rolls his eyes. “You think I can’t see the game you’re playing, Tommo.” Louis just grins around a mouthful of half-chewed chips. “Are you raising your kid like that?” Liam asks. “Are his manners as horrid as yours?”

“He’s an angel,” Louis says. “Never done a wrong thing in his life.”

Liam throws his head back and laughs. 

“But seriously, do you know what it took to get you all at that table?” Louis asks, shaking his head.

Liam’s only had half his lager, and he’s been more focused on finishing the chips before Louis realises they’re gone, but for some reason he says, “Well, for one thing I imagine you had to be willing to speak to Zayn.”

Louis laughs, looking taken aback the way he always does when Liam is a little mean. The way he always _did_ , rather. “Age has mellowed me,” he says. Liam’s skeptical, but he’ll let it slide in the interest of getting the whole story out of Louis. Louis must be able to tell, because he kicks Liam under the table. “It has, I could have just not asked him at all!” 

He’s got a point, Liam supposes.

“It’s not like meeting pettiness with pettiness has got us anywhere for the last however long,” Louis says, and then, “I didn’t really expect him to show, to be honest.”

“I didn’t either,” Liam says. “Wasn’t really sure what to expect until I walked into that room.”

Louis drains his beer. “I knew who was supposed to be there but—well.” He doesn’t need to finish the sentence; Liam knows enough about all the ways things have shattered over the years. 

“Yeah,” Liam says softly. 

Instead of saying anything more on the subject, Louis glances at Liam’s glass, by now almost empty. “I’d ask if you wanted another round but—”. He gestures uncomfortably instead, clearly floundering a little.

Liam feels his smile go a little forced, and he takes a deep breath to cover it. “If you want another it won’t bother me. I’ll have a water, though.”

The look Louis shoots him is too calculating by half, and when he returns from a trip to the bar he’s holding two ginger beers. Liam protests half-heartedly but Louis shrugs it off. “A second round will ruin my sleep anyway.”

“Mine as well,” Liam admits. 

“We’re old,” Louis says. He kicks Liam under the table again, and Liam laughs. It’s easy to feel familiar with Louis. They fit together.

“Don’t remind me,” Liam says, shaking his head. The opening is there, to ask Louis about why he decided to do this at all, but the words won’t come. There’s so much buried in it all, and it’s been a good day so far. Liam would rather keep it that way.

“How’s Freddie?” he asks. 

It’s not a subtle change of subject, but then subtlety has never been Liam’s strong suit. Louis indulges him, though, and details all the ways that Freddie’s turned into a troublemaker recently. Liam schools his face carefully, even though he can feel a smile trying to break through, and manages to say, “Can’t imagine where he learned any of that,” before he starts laughing. “Especially as you say he’s never done a wrong thing in his life.” 

Louis shakes his head emphatically. “It’s all his mum, I’m sure of it.” Still, he’s laughing, and Liam can see how proud he is in the curl of his mouth. 

When he says, “Raised him in your image,” Louis doesn’t even pretend to disagree. 

—

There’s no reason for Liam to have woken before the crack of dawn in a cold sweat, no crying Lina climbing into his bed or creaking floors as Bear sneaks around trying to pretend he hasn’t stayed up all night with his X-Box. The power’s not cut out, and there’s no odd noises, and Liam only had one lager.

He rubs his eyes and forces them open, staring at the dim shapes and shadows of his room. Everything feels just a little off, and he sits up enough to make an attempt at orienting himself. He must’ve been dreaming.

The pieces start to settle, half dream and half memory. 

He’s seen the publicly distributed bits of the story so many times that it feels like he remembers them perfectly, even though his actual memories are muddled compared to the X-Factor footage. He was so overwhelmed at the time, heartbroken and confused and hopeful and terrified, that there was no way he’d have recalled the sequence of events that led to the formation of the band as neatly as it was cut together for the X-Factor.

What he dreamt about was the bit after, the hesitant conversation backstage, all talking over each other at once and then going silent in unison. Liam’s told people about how they immediately started discussing what they should wear, and that bit does stand out, but so does the way none of them wanted to be the first to bring up any topic, even something as mundane as personal facts.

Everything felt so high stakes, even the little things, and Liam was too scared to even attempt a conversation about something like what kinds of music they all liked. He could barely make eye contact with anyone else, and it seemed like all the rest of them felt the same way. Viscerally, Liam remembers Louis bouncing on the balls of his feet, which he thought at the time meant he didn’t take it seriously but later identified as nervousness, same as the rest of them.

They’d been pulled apart to talk to cameras before anything was decided, and Liam mostly remembers texting his dad frantically in a corner. He also remembers being fairly certain that he wasn’t meant to be telling anyone, that this was all confidential, but he sent the messages anyway, too rattled to keep it to himself.

There’s not a lot of memories from that time that sit clearly in Liam’s mind, too many of them hazy with alcohol or gone fuzzy over the years with time and inattention. But apparently all it takes for him to start dreaming about it again is one meeting and one trip to the pub with Louis. He dreamt about all of it a lot right after the hiatus, waking up in the middle of the night thinking he was on a bus and disoriented by the utter silence, but it’s been years since that.

It takes him a long time to fall asleep again, and as the sky lightens outside his window he finds himself wishing for the sound of someone’s breathing. He dozes for a while as the sun creeps higher in the sky, but it’s not much later that he wakes to Lina beating her small fist against the doorframe. “Time for breakfast,” she announces the moment he sits up, and Liam blearily remembers that it’s Saturday. Bear will be back from his mum’s soon, and probably surly about being up before noon. 

He’s got another gig scheduled in the evening, DJing at a club he’s been to a few times. It’s not quite the same as being up on stage in front of an attentive crowd, but it’ll be a good time if Liam can get his head into it. It’s early yet, and there’s plenty of time for him to get himself sorted. Having Bear and Lina around will help.

Despite the dream, it’s not too bad dragging himself out of bed to fix breakfast for Lina. He’s not grown into a particularly talented cook, but it never felt right to let someone else fix all his kids’ meals. That’s a parent thing: you feed your own kids. Besides, he can handle toast and eggs. Bacon took him a while, but he’s mostly got it under control these days.

At least he’s better than Lina for now, but she’s got ambitions. Liam never even considered trying to make his own toast when he was her age. Maybe he should get someone in who can teach her, he thinks idly as he pries some muffins in half. It’s not like her mum’s any better than he is. He makes coffee while the muffins toast, because there’s no way tea is going to get him through a gig tonight when he’s been up half the night dreaming that he’s in a band again. 

The morning’s alright. Bear comes around a little after noon, which is when Liam realises he’s got two missed calls from his manager. She doesn’t usually phone on Saturday, and he’s briefly concerned but then, yesterday’s meeting was kind of important and he didn’t check in with her afterward.

By mid-afternoon, Bear’s settled at the dining table with his homework out and his mobile tucked between his legs under the table, which he evidently thinks Liam isn’t going to notice. Lina’s gone to a friend’s house for the afternoon. It’s as good a time as any for Liam to retreat into his office and ring Alex back. 

She picks up on the third ring with a cheerful, “Hiya, Liam.” 

“Hi, Alex,” he says, cradling the mobile between his phone and his shoulder so he can find a pen and paper and pretend for a few minutes that he’s the kind of person who takes notes on these calls. 

“How’d you feel about the meeting yesterday?” she asks, not bothering to beat around the bush.

Liam takes a deep breath, nods even though she can’t see him. “It was good,” he says. “I went for a drink with Louis afterward. I think it’ll go alright.”

She hums. “Got any questions about plans that I should share around or anything?”

“Dunno,” Liam says, unexpectedly thrown by the question. “I don’t think so. Er, I’ll let you know if anything does come to me, though.” 

“Great,” Alex says. She sounds cheerful. 

“You know my schedule,” Liam says, aiming for the same tone as Alex. “Just make things work whenever you can.” His stomach twists as he says it, and he forces himself not to think about how it goes against the grain to organise things with the band through their _people_. 

“Got it,” Alex confirms. “I’ll see you tonight, yeah?”

“Yeah?” Liam says. “I didn’t think you were going to make it.”

He can practically hear her smile. “Jack’s match got postponed on account of the pitch being waterlogged so he’ll be home to watch Caytie and I’m free to spend Saturday night pretending I’m twenty again and that I can stay out late and get pissed without ruining the next week of my life.” She pauses. “Or I’ll have two vodka tonics and switch to water like a professional.”

Liam laughs. “See you tonight,” he says. Alex will be good company; that’s what he needed to get out of his head and pull it together for a good set.

—

It takes them two weeks to get a second meeting organised, and even then it’s a video call. Louis and Niall are in LA, and Harry’s in New York. Liam’s in London, as usual, and he thinks Zayn is too, but he doesn’t know for sure. He’s a little thrown by not being able to tell, even though it’s not like he’s known much about Zayn’s life for the last—well, fifteen years.

Louis and Niall are both lit up by the morning sun. Niall’s clearly in an office of some kind, the wall behind him hung with framed albums. There’s a few awards there, as well. Louis is curled into the corner of a sofa, periodically lifting a mug to his mouth, a t-shirt loose around his neck. He looks cozy. Before the conversation starts in earnest, Louis mutes himself to yell at someone, looking sheepish when he returns his attention to the call. No one asks him who he was speaking to or what about.

Harry’s in an actual conference room, a little bleary-eyed even though it’s three hours later for him than it is for Louis and Niall. No one comments on it. There’s a skyline behind him and Liam has no idea if it’s real or just something pasted onto the windows to make the room look more impressive, but he rather suspects it’s real.

He and Zayn have the dullest backgrounds, blank walls behind the both of them. Liam’s in his office again, and he’s got things he ought to put up on the wall, but he hasn’t got around to it since he moved. He probably ought to just hire someone to do it, it’s been nearly three years now, but it just feels silly when he can do it perfectly well himself. 

Their teams have worked the main details out—a one-off charity show at Wembley, and that’s all. The charity’s very uncontroversial, too. Feeding hungry kids is good, but Liam’s done enough charity work by now to know that no one’s ever got themselves into too much of a state about it. The date is far enough in the future to get some promotion done, but not so far that they’re committing to anything for a long time. It’s a bit of quick turnaround, actually, but everyone involved is more than willing to throw money at any problems that might arise with the timeline.

There’s even a suggested setlist for them. Louis’s manager reads it aloud, mentioning twice that of course it’s just a jumping off point, and everyone nods politely as he reads through it.

It’s a solid start. Everything’s going objectively well, especially considering that Zayn is actually listening and willing to do the show. It’s just too weird for Liam to wrap his head around that he can be working with this group of lads, with One Direction, and be dealing with each other through their separate managers instead of as a united front.

Not that they were, in the end.

Liam’s rattled when he hangs up the call, jittery all the way down to his bones. Something about the strained normalcy of it all, like they haven’t all spent the last decade and a half avoiding anything resembling this. But now it’s happening, and everyone’s just going to act like it’s business as usual.

It’s late enough that he doesn’t actually think it’s a good idea to work out, but he won’t be able to wind down when he’s this on edge, either. Bear and Lina are off with their mums, and there’s nothing to stop him from spending an hour and a half in the gym. Even if his mind won’t shut off, he can wear his body out. 

He does as much as he thinks he’ll be able to handle and still move tomorrow, but it doesn’t keep him from thinking about the meeting. Everyone staring nervously at their cameras, like they’re afraid to be the ones to speak up with something. Or at least, that’s how Liam felt. Maybe everyone else is just checked out, doesn’t want to be there but doesn’t want to be an arse about hungry kids either.

Somehow, he doesn’t think so.

It’s hard not to think again about the very earliest days of them as a band, fumbling through conversations about all the things they were pretty sure they needed to talk about, without anyone who really knew what they were supposed to be doing. Stumbling through coming up with a name, no one wanting to be too enthusiastic or too nervous. Liam doesn’t like looking back on it, the way he’d been alternately resentful about being put in a band—about being told once again that he wasn’t good enough—and terrified that the other lads might not like him. He remembers lying awake thinking about it in one of the single beds at Harry’s dad’s bungalow, staring at the ceiling and wondering if it was possible to be kicked out by his bandmates, or if Simon would have to do it himself.

The worst part is how he knows now exactly how transparent it all was. He’d lied to his dad, said that he was just excited, but his dad’s not an idiot. He’d had a row about it with Louis, too, full on screaming at each other. It had started over something else—Liam thinks it was Louis shaking his wet hair from the shower all over Liam like a dog while Liam was trying to chat to his mum on the phone. Liam snapped something about how Louis was going to break his mobile, and Louis had rolled his eyes like he thought Liam was the least fun person in the world, and somehow, from there, it turned into Louis saying that they all knew Liam thought he was too good for them.

The worst part of having it screamed at him was that it was true, and he both wanted desperately to yell back that he _was_ too good for them, and to curl into a ball and never speak to any of them ever again.

He lied instead, insisted that he was happy about it, and then hid in his bed trying not to cry too loudly. He’d been horribly certain that as soon as he left the room, he would be cornered and they’d tell him they decided to make a go of it without him. Instead, Zayn let himself into the room and sat on the edge of Liam’s bed until he stopped crying. They didn’t talk about it, and no one talked about it when Liam finally emerged, either. 

It wasn’t until years later that they ever brought it up. Problems worked themselves out, mostly, unless they got ignored until they blew up in everyone’s face, and eventually, Liam was comfortable enough to tipsily poke his toes in Louis’s face at the end of a long day of writing and say, “I should’ve told you the truth when you accused me of thinking I was too good for the band,” and then, when Louis didn’t answer immediately, “I was wrong, though. I was just an arsehole who was really up himself.”

Louis swatted halfheartedly at Liam’s foot, and Liam dropped it into Louis’s lap. He shrugged, the movement languid from the alcohol and the hour. “You were, though,” he said, curling a hand around Liam’s ankle. Even then, Liam knew this was going to be one of the moments he’d remember years later. Not like this, tinged with melancholy and sleepless in an empty bed, but still. It had felt important.

“I couldn’t have done this,” Liam said, flexing his foot against Louis’s hand. “The singing, dunno. Maybe. But not the rest of it.” Louis’s hand tightened around his ankle, an acknowledgement of all the work it took to get them both here and the relationship they’d managed to build. 

Liam falls asleep remembering the way he’d dozed off that night to Louis humming the songs they’d been working on, only the slightest bit offkey.

—

The next morning, Liam emerges from an unbelievably long and complicated meeting with his solicitor to three texts from Alex about a tentative rehearsal schedule for the One Direction charity reunion concert. Just seeing texts from her about it is absolutely surreal—she’s such a big part of his life now, and has been since he switched directions after Lina was born, more DJing and less touring. She’s in a completely different part of his life than One Direction, except she’s not anymore. 

_Looks good_ , he replies. 

Buried below the texts from Alex, there’s one from Samantha about arranging her next weekend with Lina, one from Bear about whether they can get takeaway pizza for dinner and—one from Niall. He’d got it last night, and somehow missed it entirely because he was in such a state.

It’s nothing much, just _Excited to be working with you again !! Give us a ring sometime soon !_ It’s nice, is the thing. Friendly, like. The sort of thing that shouldn’t make Liam’s stomach turn over. It’s only that it’s been a while since he got any messages like that.

He answers the messages from Sam and Bear before he swipes back to Niall’s. He should answer; it would be good to talk to Niall again. Liam’s got kind of a thought that he’s let himself get a bit isolated in the last while, ever since things fell apart with Becca. It’s been a lot, moving and settling into new habits— with Lina especially. She’d a rough time after Becca, she needed a lot of Liam’s attention.

Traffic’s hideous even though it’s nowhere close to rush hour yet. Still, it means he’s got some time to himself, so he punches up the buttons on his steering wheel to ring Niall. No time like the present. While the phone rings, he wishes he was still the kind of person who’d do a shot for courage before something like this. Not that he’d have done that while he was driving anyway. 

“Liam!” Niall says, loud through Liam’s car stereo.

“Fuck,” Liam says, scrambling to turn the volume down before he blasts his ears out. “Sorry, sorry, let me just—” He manages to punch the volume down enough.

“You alright?” Niall asks, but he sounds like he’s laughing.

“You’re on the car—you know, the car mobile hookup, the volume was way too loud, I was about to lose my hearing in traffic on the M4.”

“The bluetooth?” Niall says, and then, “Mate, don’t get in a car accident just because you wanted to ring me, I can wait.”

“No!” Liam says, just a little too emphatic. “Traffic’s barely moving anyway, s’better than sitting here doing fuckall for the next hour.”

“Nice to know I’m better company than that,” Niall says. Liam can hear what sounds like faint guitar chords in the background, just easy progressions that he’s sure are completely mindless for Niall.

“Did I interrupt something?” he asks, mostly to be polite. He’s fairly certain that if Niall had actually been deep in rehearsing or writing he’d have let Liam go to his voicemail. He’s done it before, though it’s been a while. 

Niall scoffs. “I wasn’t getting anything done anyway. Still kinda wound up from the meeting yesterday.” 

“Yeah,” Liam says. “I spent an hour in the gym afterward and still could barely get to sleep.”

“That would’ve been a better idea than trying to compose for three hours and getting fuckall done,” Niall says, and he sighs loudly enough that it crackles through Liam’s speakers. “That was weird, right? This is all completely weird.”

Relief courses through Liam so suddenly it makes him laugh. “Completely weird,” he says.

“You looked like you were about to crawl out of your skin,” Niall says. “I was worried.” 

The knots that have been twisted in Liam’s stomach all day loosen a little, and he feels a bit more relaxed. “Was it that obvious?” he asks, even though he’s mostly just glad that he’s not the only person who feels like everything about this is too weird to wrap his head around. 

Niall laughs, warm and familiar. “Nah,” he says. “Doubt anyone else noticed, they were all too busy thinking about how weird it is for them.”

“Is it weird for you?” Liam asks after a quiet moment that he uses to catch his breath and swear at the person who’s trying to execute some kind of nightmarish illegal lane change.

“Unbelievably,” Niall says. “I thought that we’d either do something like this after five years or not at all, not fifteen years later. We’re all old now.” 

“I’ve got a teenager,” Liam says, shaking his head. “I got some texts from my manager earlier about rehearsal dates and it was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. I think before this all, about the only time the words One Direction left her mouth in front of me were when she was pissed as hell.”

“That’s weird, too,” Niall points out. “She never mentions it?”

“She didn’t for ages, until she mentioned that one time that she was a huge fan.” Liam can’t help laughing as he says it. “Think she’s embarrassed about it,” he adds, and then, “Don’t tell her I told you, she’s one of my best mates now.”

“Liam, when am I going to be gossiping with your manager?” Niall asks him, but Liam can hear it threaded through with laughter.

“You know everyone,” Liam says. “I don’t know who you might be gossiping with next week.”

Niall hums. “Pretty sure next week I’m going to be gossiping with you, or whatever we’re calling it when a bunch of blokes in their late thirties try to sing songs written for teenagers.”

“Not sure what we call that,” Liam says. “You think it’s going to go okay?”

“Dunno,” Niall says, his voice clearly measured even over the dodgy car connection. “I hope so.”

Traffic moves a little, and Liam manages to turn off. It’s a less direct route this way, but at least he won’t want to kill everyone around him.

“Yeah,” he says after a pause that’s a little too long. “Gonna be awkward if we do anything from the last album.”

Niall swears under his breath. “Was there anything on the suggested setlist? I wasn’t thinking about it.” Liam can hear muffled noises, and then the audio shifts. “Putting you on speaker while I check.”

“Probably not worth doing a new arrangement of something for one show,” Liam says, contemplative. He doesn’t feel so much like he’s going to come out of his skin, now. Niall is good for that; he’s so reliable and even-keeled. Niall kept texting for longer than everyone else, even after everything. 

“No,” Niall says. He sounds distracted, or maybe thoughtful. “Don’t see anything on here, just the earlier stuff.” He pauses for a moment. “Kind of a bummer, it was a good album.”

Liam feels a specific pang that he hasn’t in years. “It was,” he says. “Always wished we’d got to perform more of it.”

“Likewise,” Niall says softly. “Not the same playing stuff solo, it always feels a little off.”

“I always expect to hear everyone else singing too,” Liam says, just as softly. “No matter how long it’s been.”

Niall hums, and then silence falls, dragging out to the point of awkwardness. “Well, I’ll see you next week,” Liam says finally. “I’m nearly home, I need to make sure the fire brigade’s not there again.”

“That’s a story you’re going to need to fill me in on, Payne,” Niall says, then, “Next week, maybe. See you then.”

Liam says goodbye and hangs up, taking a moment to breathe deeply after he’s parked. That was pretty good. Easy. Niall’s not easy in the same way Louis is, but he keeps things polite. He’s not one to have it out with someone just because he’s in a strop, he’ll only bother if it’s really going to be worth it. Liam’s not sure he’s been worth a strop for a while now, but some pleasant conversation is helping him believe that next week won’t be a complete disaster.

—

Their first rehearsal, such as it is, is on a Wednesday morning. Liam has a bad feeling about it from the moment he walks into the studio. There’s no reason for it, except it’s been fifteen years since they did this and he doesn’t know what to expect. It won’t even be a real rehearsal, just them trying to work out all the vocals, what needs to be rearranged, that kind of thing.

And still, there’s a knot of dread in Liam’s stomach. He’s not the first one there; Louis is already sat at the piano, his fingers drifting idly across the keys. He glances over and nods as Liam walks in but doesn’t stop playing, a melody that isn’t familiar. Liam settles himself on one of the stools that’s scattered around, waiting for Louis to finish before he says anything. 

Before that happens, the door swings open again and Harry steps in. He’s in joggers, which Liam hasn’t seen in more than a decade. Louis is in joggers too, but unless he’s changed a lot more than Liam thinks he has, that’s basically formalwear for him. It’s surprising on Harry but—comforting.

It would be more comforting if Louis hadn’t gone tense the moment Harry walked in, but that’s not new either, really. Still, he spins around on the piano bench and leans back, a horrible dissonant chord playing when he sets his arms down on the keys. It makes Harry laugh, warm and slow. Liam grins, shaking his head. The tension eases a little more when Harry fumbles his water bottle, nearly upending it on an amp.

Liam’s pretty sure either the water bottle or the amp isn’t supposed to be in here, but he’s got no idea which, and he’s not about to pick a fight over it. 

A few more people, a mix of managers and techs and SyCo reps, filter in, not commenting on the silence, and the room fills with idle chatter before Niall and Zayn join them. It feels like it’s been a long wait, but they’re only a couple of minutes late. 

It starts out like the meetings—unbearably tense, but not hostile or anything like that. Just not enough eye contact, no one seeming like they know what to do with themselves, and it turns out that’s not a very good way to try to sing five-part harmony. They fumble through Best Song Ever, Liam cringing internally when he can’t seem to manage to stay in the right key.

They’re only a few bars into Live While We’re Young, when Louis clearly gets a catch in his throat and what comes out instead of his section is a horrid squeaky croaking noise. 

Something shatters then, as they all stop singing in surprise, and Niall’s the first one to start laughing but it isn’t long before they all are. Honestly, Liam thinks Louis might’ve been laughing at the song, but it doesn’t feel like the moment to bring that up.

“Shove it,” Louis grumbles, even though he’s smiling. “This isn’t my job anymore.”

“You told me you played a gig last month,” Niall says, chuckling.

Louis waves his hand around. “Doesn’t count. Way less pressure. Whenever something goes wrong at a dodgy pub gig you just blame the audio setup.”

Harry nods knowingly, and everyone turns to stare at him. “Have you ever played a dodgy pub gig in your life?” Liam asks, too incredulous to catch himself.

“Uh,” he says, and then, “Well, no.”

Niall socks him in the shoulder, then, and Harry flails away dramatically, faking like he’s in pain. Zayn rolls his eyes, but Liam can see the corners of his mouth turned up just a little. Everything feels almost normal for a moment, except that this hasn’t been normal for half his life.

“Shall we try again?” Liam asks once things have calmed down a little, and he gets a round of general agreement. 

This time, they make it a cool minute into the song before Louis mucks up his bit, clearly on purpose this time. It’s what he did back when they were lads, still trying to figure each other out, and Liam can barely shake himself out of the memories that hit him like a bus. 

“Louis,” Harry says, half exasperated but hiding his laughter poorly.

“Soz,” Louis says, grinning. “All the pressure of performing in front of these superstars is just getting to me.”

Zayn’s the one who shakes his head this time, not quite smiling. “Come off it,” he says. “You’re not scared of that.”

The laughter falls out of Louis’s face, but at least he doesn’t look angry. Liam can’t stop himself tensing up a little, and he sees Niall doing the same across the room, his eyes going wary. 

“Mate,” Louis says, his voice low and measured. “I’m absolutely fucking terrified this is all going to blow up in my face.” 

The first version of Louis that Liam knew, the one who was constantly trying to make them all laugh, he wouldn’t have said that. He’d have laughed it off, joked about his own lack of talent or how intimidating the rest of them are. The honesty of it throws Liam for a loop.

“S’not just you,” Niall says, shrugging. Harry nods once, the movement as measured as Louis’s words were. And then Zayn does too, and Liam shrugs as well.

“Definitely not just you,” Liam says. Louis looks slightly mollified, if not entirely comfortable. Liam misses all of them, at different times and in different ways, but right now he mostly misses getting to see the most unguarded versions of Louis. Twenty years ago, this is the moment they’d all have piled into a hug. Fifteen years ago too, maybe even ten years ago. 

Liam clears his throat. “Again?” he says, abruptly aware that they aren’t alone in the room. The people ostensibly accompanying them have been quiet, but this—ultimately, this is between the five of them. 

“Yeah,” Harry says. The rest of them nod, and they’re off again.

It’s clear they’d all done some practice on their own, because once the suffocating tension has eased a little they can fall into it almost easily. Not perfectly, but then it’s been a long time. By the end of the session, Liam at least is enjoying himself. He’ll take it, after everything that’s happened.

No one hugs goodbye after, but there’s some idle conversation as they all gather themselves up to leave. Zayn’s not even the first to leave—Harry is—and that feels like a good start. They have a few more of these sessions before they start getting to stage rehearsal aspects, and Liam allows himself to believe that it might go okay.

The feeling in the studio shifts after Zayn slips out, and it’s just Louis and Niall puttering around with Liam. Niall’s not put the guitar he was playing away yet, strumming at it idly, and Liam can’t help watching him. He’s never got to be more than a competent guitar player, and Niall makes it seem like an extension of himself. Louis watching too, his eyes following the smooth movements of Niall’s fingers over the strings.

It’s not that Liam thinks it’s easy to be that good at something, because he saw firsthand how hard Niall worked, but it still knocks him back how effortless he is with it.

Louis is grinning when he finally interrupts. “You got something you’re working on there?”

Niall scowls. “No,” he says. “Not for lack of trying.” Louis pats him on the shoulder mock-sympathetically, though Liam suspects he means it. Niall doesn’t offer any more explanation.

“Maybe going for a drink will help?” Liam offers. Niall shrugs.

“Can’t hurt,” he says. “Lou?”

“It’s only half twelve,” Louis says, and then, “Not got any other plans for today.”

The pub Louis took Liam to a few weeks back isn’t far, and they end up settled in a dark corner there quickly enough. Louis is sat next to Liam on one side of the table, and their thighs are just barely brushing under the table. Liam doesn’t let himself pull away from it, even when Louis drapes his arm along the back of the seat. This is all normal stuff for them.

Or at least it was, and Liam would like it to be again.

Niall kicks him under the table, startling him. “Liam!” he says. “I’ve asked you three times what you’ve been working on.”

“He’s working on not listening to you, which is a great use of his time,” Louis says, because he’s never been able to resist a good setup. Liam elbows him, careful of the pint glass in his hand.

“Mostly DJing, a bit of production and sound mixing stuff,” Liam says. “I thought I told you,” he adds, which is a bit of a lie. Hopefully it’s dim enough in the pub that they won’t see if his ears go pink. 

“I wasn’t sure if it had changed,” Niall says, with a grin that’s a little thin. “Hard to keep straight what everyone’s focused on, you know.” There’s a tension in his voice that Liam doesn’t know how to pick apart anymore. He doesn’t know if it was there when they spoke on the phone; that kind of thing that wouldn’t carry through a mobile phone and a car speaker. It makes his stomach ache.

“I solved that by not even trying,” Louis says, expansive. It’s a bit rich coming from the person who organised the reunion in the first place, but Liam doesn’t want to press him on it. He doesn’t want to press too much and risk the conversation going to personal places he’s not ready for.

“We aren’t all twats,” Niall says. He aims it at Louis, but it settles uncomfortably under Liam’s skin anyway, and he looks down at the table wishing their food was here already. 

“Sure we are,” Louis says.

“Speak for yourself,” Niall retorts. “I’ve managed to stay on speaking terms with all of you.” He pauses, shrugging. “Well, mostly. Unless you give up on me after this conversation.”

“Nah,” Louis says. “Put up with you for too long by now, haven’t I?”

Liam touches his foot to Niall’s under the table. “I wouldn’t,” he says, and Niall raises an eyebrow but doesn’t press.

Silence falls until after the food is brought over, at which point Louis takes a long pull from his drink and says to Niall, “So are you and Harry really still mates?”

“Yeah,” Niall says. “Not like we were, we don’t talk every day but, yeah.”

Somehow, Liam is surprised. He thought—well, he’s not sure what he thought, but he hadn’t expected that. Harry got so distant, in the end.

“I didn’t realise,” Liam says, just to fill the silence. “I don’t really,” he says, unsure where the sentence is meant to go. “We text sometimes, I suppose.” He doesn’t want to turn to Louis and see his face, so he busies himself with his lunch.

“Louis?” Niall says. He’s got that tone like he knows he’s pressing at a sore spot, and he knows he’s going to get away with it, too.

Liam feels Louis shrug, their shoulders brushing. It feels like the pub isn’t loud enough to disguise this, even though no one is sat near them and there’s a burly chap a few tables away that he can tell is Niall’s security. Neither he nor Louis have their own these days, and he imagines he’ll have to get used to it again if they’re doing this.

“We’ve spoken a few times,” Louis says. “He rang after Fizz died. I rang after he won the Grammy.” He takes a breath so deep it looks uncomfortable. “We don’t not speak, it’s not like—you know.” He gestures at nothing at all. “Everything got so mad, in the end. Still is, sometimes.”

Liam clears his throat. “The Grammy was almost seven years ago,” he points out, trying to keep his voice light.

“Suppose it was,” Louis says, in the voice that means he doesn’t want to talk about it. That hasn’t seemed to stop Niall yet today, but he hasn’t asked any more questions yet. Louis’s got all the tension that had gone out of him earlier coiled back; from where they’re just barely touching, Liam can tell how tense Louis is, and how carefully still he’s holding himself.

“I’m dropping it,” Niall says, holding his hands up. “It was your idea to get the gang back together,” he points out, a rare edge to his voice. “You should’ve expected a few questions.”

Louis makes a rude gesture at Niall, and that’s that for then. It devolves from there, Louis and Niall kicking each other under the table and trying to steal each other’s food. Liam laughs at them, not letting himself get dragged into it.

Thing is, he’d got to the point of not missing them so much it makes his bones ache. He’s got Lina a lot of the time, and Bear most weekends, and Alex and the rest of his team. It’s not the same, but he’s not the same either, and there’s plenty he doesn’t miss about One Direction anyway. It’s just that this, having Louis plastered to his side and having a laugh about absolutely nothing at all with Niall, this is what he _does_ miss. 

Niall smacks Louis’s hand away from his plate so hard it sounds like Louis got slapped, and Louis yanks the hand back looking offended. “You know how I feel about people taking my food, Tommo,” Niall says. 

Liam tries to settle into the familiarity of it, but he never quite manages it, and the feeling of discombobulation lingers all afternoon until he crawls into bed entirely too late despite having done fuckall with the rest of his day.

—

The vocal rehearsals go slowly after that, since their schedules are all nightmares—some more than others, but Liam has to take some blame, since he won’t agree to nighttime sessions if Lina is with him, even when it’s the most convenient time for everyone else. They end up with the final vocal run-through set on a Saturday night despite that, the sun already low in the sky as Liam heads to the studio even though it’s late spring and the days are starting to drag out longer.

There’s a bit of a break after this—Harry’s got stuff in LA, and Niall’s got something with his family he refuses to explain or miss—and then a week or so of stage rehearsals and then the actual gig. Liam doesn’t feel like he’s wrapped his head around it at all.

He’s the last one in today, and the others are already settled in. Niall’s got his guitar, and Louis’s sat at the piano instead of any of their usual accompanists. They’ll be rehearsing with a real band once they get on stage but this is just to get all the melodies and harmonies back into their heads. It reminds Liam of the few times all five of them sat down and wrote together, fiddling with melodies and lyrics until something started to fit. 

Niall gestures to the empty stool next to him as everyone murmurs greetings, and Liam drops onto it, knocking his knee against Niall’s lightly. They get right into it from there, running through the setlist easily enough. It’s both oddly familiar and deeply unusual—the songs come back to him so easily, as much muscle memory as anything, but Liam’s not sure they ever had a rehearsal this focused when they were younger. It makes him want to do something ridiculous, fling himself on someone the way Louis would have, or put something in Harry’s hair, which actually looks quite nice today. True, he’d be properly put out if Liam poured tea in it, but that doesn’t make it less tempting.

Only the piece of Liam that remembers how long it’s been since they really spoke stops him. Maybe Harry’s less open to a laugh at his own expense now, or maybe he wouldn’t like it from someone he’s not been mates with for more than ten years.

The first runthrough goes quickly, on account of no one sitting on anyone else or whatnot. Liam’s about to go fetch someone to actually listen to them and tell them all the places they’ve gone wrong when Zayn clears his throat.

“You don’t need to pretend you don’t like each other on my account,” he says. His voice is just the slightest bit hoarse. Every instinct in Liam’s body says to offer to make him a cup of tea. No one says anything for an excruciating moment, and Liam doesn’t let himself look around to see their faces.

“Do we like each other?” Harry asks, finally, glancing around at the rest of them. “We don’t not like each other, I suppose.”

Liam wishes he could argue the point, curl his arms around Louis’s waist or smack Harry’s arse or muss Niall’s hair. He even wishes he could press a kiss to Zayn’s temple in reassurance, but he’s sure he doesn’t have that privilege anymore. 

Zayn lets out a wry laugh. “Well, you don’t have to pretend to like each other on my account either. Go on, have a proper row.” He pauses, looking around at them. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Louis opens his mouth, clearly about to speak, and then he closes it without saying anything. Impossibly, Liam knows exactly what was on his mind, can feel all the way to the pit of his stomach the _you forfeited the right to those fights when you left_ that Louis’s left unsaid. 

The silence that settles is heavy around them all, weighing Liam down. It makes him want to laugh, the kind of horrid fake laughter that escapes him when he’s uncomfortable. He pushes the urge away. The least he can offer them all at this point is sincerity, even if it means being uncomfortable. 

“I _want_ to like you all,” Niall says softly, after entirely too long. He shrugs with one shoulder, awkward with the guitar still resting in his lap. “It’s been a long time since I had a chance to.”

Everyone looks at him, and Liam turns the thought over in his head. It feels like a starting point for something he hadn’t even realised he wanted to pick back up. He doesn’t let himself look over at Zayn or Louis, tries to keep his eyes fixed on the speakers in the corner kind of behind Niall. Niall’s the safest person to look towards. The easiest.

“I can work with that,” Harry says, voice going rough. He looks around at them, his eyes catching on Zayn and then moving smoothly until they stop on Liam. “How about you, Liam?”

“It seems like a good starting point,” Liam says, letting himself meet Harry’s gaze.

“Louis?” Niall says. He’s got the beginning of a smile on his face, but there’s nerves in his eyes, too. It throws Liam constantly how little their mannerisms have changed.

“Yeah,” Louis says. “Not promising no rows, though.”

“We wouldn’t believe you if you did,” Niall says. 

Liam sees Zayn nod out of the corner of his eye, the final vote. Something settles warm in his chest, makes him want to smile so broadly it hurts his cheeks. He doesn’t think he’s earned that, so instead he says, “We do still have a rehearsal to get through.”

They manage it, somehow. Liam’s heart is in his throat the whole time, but the notes are good, and there’s plenty to refine before they’re going to be on stage trying to remember what it’s like to move around each other. He tries not to think about whether it’ll be like before, whether they’ll still sing Little Things to each other until they get the giggles or chase each other around the stage or anything else. He’s got almost a month to think about all that. Tonight he’s just going to be pleased.

“Do you all want to come over for dinner?” he asks as they’re gathering their things up. “Er, I realise it’s last minute and sudden and all but—it might be nice?”

Louis tilts his head. “Easier than trying to find a way to go for a drink.” He doesn’t wave his hand vaguely at Harry and Zayn, but Liam knows it’s what he’s thinking about. 

Meanwhile, Harry’s eyes go narrow. “Will we have to eat your cooking?”

Liam waves his mobile in Harry’s direction. “I know how to get takeaway. Besides, I haven’t killed Lina or Bear yet.”

When Harry shrugs and says “Alright,” Liam knows the rest of them will agree, and it makes his stomach turn over even as it makes him smile. 

None of them have his address, and Zayn doesn’t even have his number, but after a few minutes of awkward information exchange, everyone’s settled. Liam leaves as soon as they’re done, so that he can be sure to get home before any of the others. Everything falls into place somehow, and it’s not even an hour before they’re settled on his back patio, eating straight from the takeaway containers the way they did when they were seventeen and eighteen. The conversation never gets heavy, but it never goes as awkward as it was earlier either, and Liam can’t push down the unbearable hope rising in his belly. 

He likes things to be fixable. 

Night settles comfortably around them, and things loosen a little more. Louis tells stories about Freddie and then Niall lets slip that he might have a secret paramour, which promptly sends everyone else into a tizzy while Niall shakes his head and refuses to reveal a single thing. Years ago, it would’ve ended with Louis tickling him into submission, or maybe Liam pinning his arms, while one of the others nicked his mobile to try and get into his texts. Still, Niall turns the same hideous shade of pink while everyone tries to extract a name from him. 

Catching Niall’s eye, Liam tries his best to steer the conversation to another topic and spare him the full grilling that looks fully prepared to deliver. Niall gives him a tiny nod of acknowledgement as Louis tears off into a story about his youngest siblings and the ways they’ve been terrorising the whole family. 

With a small smile, almost shy in the way that Liam remembers from their first days together, Zayn offers Liam some of his extra food. There’s more than enough for them to all try each other’s, all generous portions from the takeaway, but Liam appreciates the gesture. 

Things break up not long after that, and for half a moment Liam thinks Niall’s going to hug them all goodbye, but he doesn’t. Harry stays to help tidy up, the first time he and Liam have been alone in ages. It’s late by then, and they’re both quiet, but Harry is unfailingly polite as he asks Liam where to put things and boxes up the leftovers.

That night, Liam stays up until all hours at the piano, letting his fingers slide through familiar chords until they start to build into something like a melody, almost something he might feel like he should let grow.

—

If Liam was hopeful after the tentative dinner, it doesn’t last past the process of rescheduling their stage rehearsals. Harry’s stuff in LA takes longer than anticipated, and then Zayn has something come up that he won’t say anything about except it only leaves him with three options, and Liam has to set up with Sam for her to take Lina on a school night because of it. 

When the day itself comes around, nearly a month after the final vocal run-through, Liam wakes up at the crack of dawn from a dream that he’s twenty again, exhausted down to his bones and overwhelmed but also allowed to tuck himself under Louis’s arm and breathe against his skin until the worst of it passed. The dream exhaustion lingers all day, not helped by Lina throwing a fit before school about having to go to her mum’s that night.

Liam’s afternoon meeting goes long, running past the two hour mark as they try to sort out the details of what could turn into a regular DJing and remixing arrangement for him, and Liam doesn’t have time for dinner before he has to get to the venue. It’s not very late, but he’s used to eating early with Lina, and his stomach is starting to grumble.

Even though he’s late, no one is there but Zayn, who’s sat backstage flicking through his mobile with a scowl on his face. “Sorry I’m late,” Liam says as he drops into another empty chair. Zayn barely glances up, shrugging with one shoulder.

“S’not like anyone else is here yet.”

Liam’s hungry, and pissy that he could’ve got at least a takeaway sandwich since half the band’s even later than him, and if Zayn’s going to be in a strop, well, that’s not exactly different from the last fifteen years of Liam’s life so he’s not going to do anything about it right now. Instead of picking a fight, he pulls his own mobile out and stares at it, not really wanting to check his email or go on Instagram. He doesn’t have any texts to answer, and he can’t check on Lina this early or it’ll send her into a tizzy. 

He ends up playing a few levels of a game that he hasn’t touched in years. He’d downloaded it ages back because Bear begged him to, but Bear’d got bored of it within months, and Liam just never deleted it. It’s distracting enough to pass the time until Harry and Niall shuffle in together, Harry clutching an enormous coffee even though it’s nearly six. 

“Couldn’t sleep a wink on the flight over,” Harry offers by way of greeting. That’s odd, Liam thinks, unlike the Harry he remembers, but his eyes are tired, and he’s slouching. Niall’s smile is thin as he drops into another chair, pulling his mobile out as well.

Louis is half an hour late. He apologises when he finally runs in, looking harried, but it doesn’t undo the time Liam’s spent getting hungrier and hungrier. Harry’s not even sat down, just leaned against the wall and explained that he’s afraid that if he sits down he won’t get back up. 

Liam has a sudden, abrupt memory of the first time Harry fell asleep on him, before they’d even really learned how to get on with each other. But that hadn’t stopped Harry from slumping sideways halfway through a long day of hurry-up-and-wait X-Factor filming, his head landing on Liam’s shoulder. Liam’d been too nervous to shove him the way he learned to later, because if you let Harry get too comfortable he’d drool on you.

Louis is explaining why he’s late, something about a mix-up on his calendar, but no one seems particularly convinced.

“You could’ve texted,” Zayn says, his lips pursed.

“We could’ve rescheduled,” Niall adds. “Doesn’t seem like it’s a good time for anyone.”

“We’re all already here,” Harry says. “Might as well get it over with.”

Liam looks up from his mobile just in time to see a shadow of an expression cross Niall’s face, but he nods. The rest of them do too, and then they drag themselves out onto the stage. The lights have been flickering through the same patterns over and over while they’ve been waiting, but they stop once all five of them are on stage. Liam waves to the familiar faces he can just barely make out in front of the stage, and Louis yells out an apology for the late start.

“At least there’s no choreography to learn,” Zayn mutters next to him.

Working through all the staging would be a tedious nightmare even if Liam weren’t hungry. Even when they were all genuinely mates and could have a laugh during these bits, it was never his favourite. As it is, no one’s smiling, much less laughing. 

They make it through almost the entire walkthrough without incident, until they’re trying to get set for a section of ballads, and, somehow, Louis manages to spin his microphone into Niall’s gut while he’s fooling around. Years ago, they’d have laughed it off—Louis would have pressed a conciliatory kiss to Niall’s head, or maybe to his stomach, and Niall would’ve mussed his hair in return, and made Louis pay for his drinks later. But now, in the present, Niall grimaces and mutters, “Fucking christ, Tomlinson,” loud enough for everyone to hear it. “Pay a little attention to what you’re doing.”

Louis tosses out an offhand apology the way he would’ve before, and as soon as it leaves his mouth Liam can see that it was the wrong thing to say. Niall rolls his eyes and sighs, saying, “Not really in the mood to get beaten black and blue tonight,” under his breath.

Liam feels frozen, the urge to smooth things over warring with his realisation that he has no idea how to do that. He knows what would’ve worked in 2014, but it’s suddenly hitting him just how little he understands about their relationships with each other now. He barely even understands _his_ relationships with them all. 

They finish the rest of the session in near silence, and Liam finds himself just grateful they don’t have to sing too much tonight, just a few lines here and there. They’re back in two days for a full run-through. Maybe things can be sorted a little before then. Or maybe not, it’s not like it’ll be the first time they get through a rehearsal—or a concert, for that matter—when half of them are stroppy and the other half are at each other’s throats.

They’d had some proper rows, back in the day. He’s almost nostalgic about it.

It’s a relief when they wrap up, and Liam doesn’t linger this time. He says something about how he could eat a horse as he leaves, but doesn’t actually pay attention to whether anyone’s listening at all, and then he’s in such a mood on the way home that he doesn’t remember until he’s standing in his kitchen that he meant to get someone to order groceries for him today and all he’s got are things that he needs to cook. He ends up eating a miserable bowl of pasta with butter like he’s a toddler, because everything else seems like too much work or too much waiting, and he crawls into bed unsatisfied and discontent.

In the morning, Liam has a text from Alex asking if she can come to the next rehearsal, and not only is there no reason for him to say no, he probably ought to be asking her to be there to make sure everything behind the scenes is going smoothly. He tells her she’s welcome to and that he’d appreciate her being there, all the while dreading that it’ll be as tense and unpleasant as last night. He doesn’t know if he wants her to see that side of him.

It’s kind of an empty day, the morning intentionally easy because when his schedule had been set he’d thought he’d be wrestling Lina out of bed and off to school. He wants to text Louis to make sure he smooths things over with Niall, but that’s not his business anymore. Louis and Niall can sort themselves out. Niall said he wants to try to like them, but Liam can’t solve all the problems.

He works out instead, and then, for lack of anything better to do, sits back down at the piano and fiddles about with a melody he’d stumbled on the night everyone came over to his. It’s been years since he wrote anything properly, and he was never much of a lyricist, but it passes the time. It’s just a few notes, not anything to get too excited about. Nothing worth writing down yet, even, but Liam can’t seem to get it out of his head.

In the end, he texts Niall to check everything’s alright, that he was just in a bad mood last night instead of there being something really wrong. Niall rings him back half an hour later, nattering away for a few minutes as he confirms that he really did just have a bad day yesterday, and he was stressed all night because he had an early morning today.

Somehow, what comes out of Liam’s mouth in response is, “If you’re not too tired, do you want to come by for dinner? It’s just going to be me and Lina.”

“Are you cooking?” Niall says, and then, “I’ll come if you let me cook.”

“Lina would love that, she’s already got ambitions I can’t keep up with,” Liam says, and then, somehow, it’s a plan. Niall comes by a couple of hours after Lina gets home from school. Liam’s prodded her through all her homework with the promise of a better cooking lesson than anything he’s been able to give her. This is better than hiring a professional chef to teach her or something mad like that. Much more normal for her to get lessons from his friend.

Niall shows up with a massive bag of food in one hand and a six pack in the other. It’s like they’re kids again, just appearing at each other’s flats for something to do. As he walks in, his eyes catch on the piano—fallboard up, bench pulled out, no music set out—but he doesn’t comment on it, just makes his way to the kitchen. 

Niall hasn’t seen Lina in years, but the reintroduction goes smoothly. She’s excited about Niall, whose music she’s heard on the radio, and even more excited about being able to help with some cooking. “Dad got angry and didn’t let me cook anymore after I burned my toast and the fire brigade came,” she explains. Niall looks at Liam delightedly, mouthing, “Did she really?”

Liam nods, glum. “I’m just glad I’m not interesting enough for paps to hang around here much these days. Can you imagine?”

Niall’s laughing outright now. “‘Liam Payne, formerly the most responsible member of One Direction, is a terrible parent whose daughter nearly burned his house down when she was left unsupervised to make toast,’” he intones. Liam shakes his head and covers his eyes with his hand. 

He gets pressed into helping cook as well, since he’s trusted with the knives, while Niall shows Lina how to measure things. At the end of it all, Liam’s got a pasta with vegetables and sausage on the table, and a daughter who’s fairly shaking with excitement. He’s definitely going to have to get her some real lessons now, or one of those kits for kids who like to play in the kitchen so she won’t be trying to use the grill or the sharp knives or anything dangerous. 

Niall looks delighted about it all and spends most of dinner dutifully answering her questions about cooking, and music, and America.

“Your dad’s been to America lots,” Niall points out, an attempt at redirection that doesn’t work at all when Lina shakes her head determinedly.

“But you’re _cool_ ,” she says, and Liam just laughs. 

Bedtime is a nightmare. Liam has two beers to recover from it, for probably the first time in years, and he and Niall are sat in the backyard. He’ll check on Lina when he turns in, but for now he’s just going to believe she’s asleep.

Liam has to screw up his courage to break the comfortable silence, but he turns toward Niall and says, “What happened with you and Lou yesterday?” he asks. 

“Not beating around the bush, then,” Niall says. He doesn’t sound upset about it, but his mouth twitches unhappily. 

“Suppose not,” Liam says. “You were the one who said you wanted to try being mates again, y’know.”

Niall shrugs, and cracks another beer open for himself. It’s the last one in the six pack he brought over, and Liam’s not got any of his own. “I do,” he says, “But that doesn’t mean we can just all snap our fingers and pretend the last however fucking long didn’t happen, even if Louis wants to.”

Liam narrows his eyes. “What’s that mean?”

After taking a long pull from his drink, Niall says, “He stopped answering my texts, dodged all my calls, and now he wants to skip to the part where we’re just best mates in a band again?” There’s bitterness in his voice that lands heavy in the pit of Liam’s stomach.

“I wasn’t exactly easy to catch up with either,” he points out, but Niall waves a lazy hand around.

“You’re not like—fucking skipping ahead now,” he says. “You’re _trying_.”

“Guess so,” Liam murmurs, and then, “Mostly just with you. Everyone else is—complicated.”

Niall laughs. “You sayin’ I’m not complicated? I’ll have you know—”

“You’re _not_ ,” Liam insists. “Not like the rest, where it’s all—tangled up feelings or whatnot. You’re just a mate I owe an apology for being a knobhead who didn’t pick up his mobile.”

At Niall’s expectant look, Liam adds, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been a knobhead and I should’ve rung you.”

“Thanks,” Niall says.

The comfortable silence falls back over them for a few minutes, and then Liam says, “I didn’t even notice if he stopped answering my messages.”

Niall takes a deep breath, harsh in the quiet twilight. “I don’t know if he did. You’re—the two of you were—something else. Not like how it was with the rest of us.”

Liam lets himself mull it over for a few moments before Niall adds, “He was right obsessed with you, I kept waiting for him to get over it and he never did.” 

Clearing his throat to fill the silence, Liam lets himself sink into the memories of it for a moment. It’s been a long time since Liam’s let himself think too much about how that felt, when he was seventeen—eighteen—nineteen—and not entirely comfortable in his own skin, and Louis was draped over him at every turn, pulling his hair and mussing his clothes. Being the focus of the full force of Louis’s attention so often.

“He did text this morning to apologise properly for hitting me with the mic,” Niall says, interrupting Liam’s reminiscing. 

“That’s good,” Liam murmurs. 

“It’s a start,” Niall allows. “I’m less angry with him now I’m not tired and hungry,” he adds. Liam tries not to laugh and fails miserably. Niall swings his leg out like he’s trying to kick Liam, but he’s too far away for it to land. If they were close enough, Liam would’ve pulled him into a hug that was half a tackle. 

“Thanks for coming over,” Liam says instead. “We should do it again, Lina would be so excited.”

“Yeah,” Niall says, “And what about you?”

“Obviously,” is Liam’s response, the word falling off his tongue easily. “If we’re going to get things sorted with everyone we might as well start with ourselves.”

“Cheers,” Niall says, holding up his empty bottle even though Liam’s thrown his away.

—

Knowing Niall at least isn’t going to row with him about everything that’s happened makes it a lot easier for Liam to settle in the next night. Alex is sat in the audience, right near the stage, with her feet up on the seat in front of her. She looks extremely relaxed, and that helps too. 

Niall comes over and nudges Liam. “Is that your manager?” he asks. “Didn’t you say she was a big fan? You think she’d lose it if I went over there?”

Liam grins. “She’d keep it together, she’s a pro. But you should do it.”

Problem is, Niall going to hassle Alex means that Liam’s left on stage without him, trying to figure out what the hell to do. Trying not to stare at Louis too much, thinking about what Niall said last night about Louis being obsessed with him.

It hadn’t really stuck out at the time, when Liam was so caught up in the whirlwind of their lives. They were all a little obsessed with each other at first, with making sense of each other, and by the time they’d settled somewhat, it was all just—normal. It became the way they were together. Looking back, Liam can sort of see what Niall was saying, the way Louis bothered him all the time, always trying to get a rise out of him, even after they’d sorted out their issues. It’s still hard to wrap his head around the idea that it was special or remarkable. That was just Louis. That was how he was.

Glancing down, he can see that Alex’s gone pink as Niall chats with her, and he lets himself chuckle at it. She’ll get over the embarrassment, or possibly she’ll emerge from it with Niall’s mobile number scribbled on her hand. He wouldn’t put it past her at all.

As soon as Niall’s hopped back up on the stage, surprisingly spry given that last Liam’d heard his knee had never really been right, it’s time for them to actually get started. Alex is still looking relaxed, but everyone else watching them is sat up straight, and two of them have notepads out. There’s a setlist taped to the stage in front of him, but he’s still got to remember everything they ran through two nights ago. It feels like a lot, and Liam’s not sure if it’s because it’s more planned out than their concerts used to be, or if it’s because he doesn’t have the songs drilled into his soul quite the same way, or if it’s because he has no idea how it’s going to go when they start having to sing and move around each other at the same time.

They’d talked about it, and they’d all agreed it would be too weird to just stand up there and sing, that the movement and the energy was too important. “It doesn’t have to be perfect,” Louis had said, “But I want it to feel like us.” Harry’d nodded, and Niall too, and Liam had caught himself watching Zayn, thinking about how there were two versions of _us_. But Zayn had nodded too.

“Hard to imagine really feeling it and just being stood there like a statue,” he’d said. 

“Exactly!” Louis had agreed, and Zayn had smiled at that. That had been one of the good moments.

This turns out to be a pretty good moment too, when they run through the first few songs without too much issue. A few fumbles, a few false notes, but overall it’s a lot of the same to when they did this before, when they were actually a band instead of just putting on a show of it to help feed kids. The uptempo stuff’s easy, leaves them free to bop around the stage a bit when they’re not singing. It’s not quite dancing, but it’s what Zayn had said weeks ago—letting themselves feel it.

A few stumbles where they crash into each other is to be expected; they’d not been able to avoid that even when they were at their most in sync. 

It’s when they settle in a bit for some of the slow songs that Liam’s stomach really starts to churn. He can bounce around a stage to Girl Almighty almost as well now as he did when he was a twentysomething, but the idea of sitting down on the edge of the stage and crooning out a love song hits differently. 

Still, they all sit down, Liam and Louis next to each other with their legs dangling off the stage. Harry and Niall are higher up, because Harry’s finagled his way into getting a guitar as well, and they’re whispering about something. Liam’s got no idea if it’s about the song, or if they’re just chatting away. Niall says they still talk. Zayn’s by himself, which people are absolutely going to read into a stupid amount, but they can deal with that before the actual show. Right now, Liam’s just telling himself to take deep breaths as the song starts.

He’d had a few dreams, when he was a lad, bleary with adrenaline and exhaustion and alcohol, about just leaning over and kissing Louis on stage in the middle of Little Things. Dreams where he did it to shut him up, or to distract him from being a pest, or for no reason except that he wanted to. He remembers them surprisingly clearly, and it feels almost real, the way they were kissing on the stage, surrounded by people except they weren't because it was silent, no one was screaming. 

He’s not dreaming now, and it’s not silent around them even if it is quieter than it was at their concerts, and Louis is holding himself a little away from Liam anyway. When they sang this before, their thighs would be pressed against each other, and Liam would drape his arm around Louis, or Louis would tuck himself up against Liam and mess with his clothes. Or his nipples, because Louis was a menace.

They’re not like that anymore.

Liam’s voice cracks on one of his lines, and he can feel the eyes on him. He shakes his head to clear it; there’s no use getting caught up in all the things he used to think about, not when they’ve got a real concert coming that they need to not fuck up too badly. 

“You alright?” Louis murmurs, his microphone held well away from his face. Someone will probably hear anyway. Liam nods. He’s alright enough, even if that’s apparently not enough to fool Louis even after all these years. “If you say so,” Louis says, but he drops it.

Before, he’d have pressed after the rehearsal, taken Liam out for drinks and hassled him until he spilled what was wrong, or some version of it close enough to the truth that it mollified him. Tonight, after the rehearsal, they go their separate ways. Liam walks out with Alex after waving goodnight to everyone else.

“How’d we do?” he asks her, and she shrugs.

“You want my professional opinion or—?” 

“Either,” Liam says. “Both, I suppose.”

“It was weird,” she says, laughing. “Professionally, like, just a rehearsal. Not perfect but I’m not concerned. But as a person who’s seen a One Direction concert before, weird as hell.”

“Oh no,” Liam says, covering his face with one hand. “That obvious?”

Alex grimaces. “You’re barely even looking at each other. I thought you said things were getting better.”

Liam sighs. “They are. Just not better enough, apparently.”

“Well,” she says. “You’ve had a few weeks to try and work out two decades of history. It was a tall order.” She smiles at him, and then adds, “Go home, it’ll be fine.”

When Liam gets home, he’s got a text message from Louis. It’s just a silly picture of what Liam’s pretty sure is Freddie’s dog, nothing that should feel heavy, but it does anyway.

Liam thinks about what Niall said, about Louis wanting things to be fixed without any of the work, and doesn’t answer it. 

The next morning, Liam answers Louis’s message with a laughing emoji. There’s not much else to say about a funny dog picture, and he’s busy not thinking about how long it had been since Louis texted him before that. Or, for that matter, how long it had been since he’d texted Louis, how deep in his phone he knows that conversation is buried.

What Niall said, about Louis wanting things to be how they were without having to acknowledge everything that’s changed—it’s sticking with him. So much has changed. Liam’s been married twice, the only one of the five of them who’s been married at all, unless someone’s managed a really impressive secret one. The first time was a big affair, a real celebrity do with all the trappings, and Liam had invited what felt like everyone he’d ever met. All the boys had come, save Zayn, but they’d not been stood next to him the way he’d once imagined they would be. They’d been regular guests, settled in their seats to wish him and Samantha well.

Back when Liam had first let himself imagine getting married, all of 19 and too young to realise how young he was, he’d imagined that Louis might be the person passing him the ring and making a speech at the reception. It feels silly now, with everything that’s happened since their break, but he believed it then. He believed it for a long time, in all honesty.

Marrying Becca had been a bit of an impulse, a tiny ceremony with just their parents and Liam’s kids and a few friends invited at the last minute, because she said she’d fancy it and, well, Liam fancied himself in love with her. He’s still not sure if he really was, or if he just wanted someone to love him, and he’s not had the heart to try and figure it out.

None of his friends were there, but that still isn’t the thing that he remembers as feeling the most wrong about it.

They’re playing the reunion concert in four days, on a Saturday night in June, at Wembley. Liam’s not played a real concert in ages, much less one at a venue this size. He doesn’t think any of them have, and he can’t help being a little nostalgic about it. He’s not got the energy and enthusiasm he had at 21, but it’s hard not to think about singing for a hundred thousand people screaming the words he wrote back at him and not get a thrill.

The final runthrough of the charity show is tomorrow, full vocals on stage to get them used to it. Liam’s not sure whose camp suggested it, but it’s so unlike the kind of prep they used to do—vocal rehearsals when they could squeeze them in, maybe time for a single walkthrough on the stage before they were performing in every new venue. The leisurely schedule isn’t the worst part of it, except for the days where all he’s got to do is faff around the house thinking about his two failed marriages.

He’s not got much to fill his time today, until Lina gets done with school, and it’s the kind of emptiness that he doesn’t like, that lets him sink too far into broodiness. Nothing to be done about it now except to try and find something so he doesn’t spend the whole day caught up in memories of what he thought his life would be. 

He sits down at the piano again instead of moping all day, the weight of the keys familiar under his fingers. He’s not in the mood to return to the half-melody he’s had in his head the last few weeks, so he plays familiar things instead, his fingers running smoothly through a few scales and chords, before he settles into the songs he learned when he was first picking it up. He hasn’t got any music easily to hand, so he’s stuck with things he can remember, or pick out once he’s found a few notes. 

It’s only the tiniest slip from there to start playing the band’s songs. They’re on his mind after all, and he ought to do a bit of vocal practice, anyway, the kind of casual stuff he’d have done with the lads when they were all living on top of each other but that’s just as easy with him and his piano.

That’s no excuse for getting caught up and wasting half the day, but it’s not like he had anything else on.

—

For all the time that Liam had spent fretting about the next few days, they end up passing in a blink, and before he knows it he’s stepping out onto the stage at Wembley for the first time in fifteen years, lights flashing in his eyes and the crowd screaming so loud he can’t hear himself think. 

It’s still a massive rush, the crowd around him and the music pounding, familiar chords and melodies reverberating through him. For half a moment he truly believes he’s a kid again, doing this night after night until it feels normal, as much as anything like this can feel normal. It’s easy, especially as the music builds and Harry starts to sing, to let it wrap him all up and carry him along.

His heart pounding in his chest and the muscle memory of it all get him through the first few songs, even as he’s distantly aware that the group of them singing about being young is laughable, that really these are all songs about being young, for people who are young. It passes quickly enough, though, and by the time that the opening notes of Story of My Life start, a few songs in, Liam’s just—feeling it.

He’d forgot just how much fun it is to be in a crowd like this, feeding off the energy and sharing it with everyone on stage, how it gets contained during the slower songs and builds and builds and builds until he feels like he’s going to scream as loud as the crowd is, just to let it out.

The tension’s not just building with the audience tonight, but on stage, too. Every time they glance at each other, quick eye contact to make sure they’re all on the same page, they turn away a heartbeat too quickly, and every time Liam feels the urge to reach for someone and settle his arm around their shoulders, and then he doesn’t. He’s got to talk after Story of My Life, give the welcome and do the pump up chit-chat that used to be second nature and now feel scripted, like he’s memorised the talking points but not figured out how to make it sound like him.

He’s out of practice.

He’s not actually touched another person on the stage through five songs, and his fingers itch.

Liam keeps waiting for things to settle and feel the way they ought to, even though he’s got no idea what that even means now. It feels off to be singing like this and not have anyone trying to grope him. He can’t exactly blame anyone for keeping their distance, since he is too, and there’s a lot of space between trying to like each other and pulling each other’s trousers down in front of a hundred thousand people. Still, it’s got him bouncing on his toes when they’re meant to be settling into it, sitting with their legs hanging over the side of the stage and crooning into the audience about their little things.

Or crooning to each other, the way Liam used to even when he knew it would make him dream about Louis meaning it and wake up confused and half heartbroken. He directs his words out at the crowd, making eye contact with anyone he can actually see past the lights, and somehow even though that should be easier than pushing through the unsettledness of everything, it just makes him feel like he’s outside his own body, watching himself do his own concert wrong.

Louis sits next to him, the way they always did, and he cautiously touches his knee to Liam’s as he sings. Liam doesn’t flinch from it because he knows what that would look like. He thinks Louis is doing it because it’s how they always did this, or at least a pale imitation of it, but he doesn’t know for sure. He doesn’t know what to make of what Louis is doing right now at all, and it makes him feel like he’s back on the X-Factor, confused and overwhelmed and positively vibrating with stress all the time.

At least he’s not responsible for the charity appeal a few songs later and he can sneak off backstage and spend as long as he can get away with in the loo, taking deep breaths until he feels like his skin actually fits his body. He can hear Louis talking through the speakers that are everywhere, sounding casual and composed as he talks about the importance of making sure kids get enough to eat, nailing all of the talking points that Liam remembers reading about the effects of hunger on kids’ learning and growth. He’s killing it, honestly.

Liam’s trying not to think about how many of the songs they have left have his name next to Louis’s on the writing credits. How many of the songs they’ve already done have it too. He doesn’t like feeling that he’s counting down until the end of the show, the way he did when he was at his most ragged, but the unsettling mix of past and present happening to him right now is wearing him down the way the longest tours did. 

Just seven more songs, and none of them are the ones where he used to dream about kissing Louis.

The crowd is into it, even if Liam feels like the distance between them on stage is palpable. It’s not like they never turned in solid performances on nights when everyone was out of sync before. Liam can grit his teeth and get through it the way he did plenty of times before, and that’s what he does.

At least the energy is there for the encore, and he can just let himself get caught up in it the way he did to start the show. It’s enough, at least, and it feels like they probably pulled off a decent show, even if Liam’s still full of nervous energy instead of content and a little wrung out the way he normally feels after two hours of performing.

He’s caught up thinking about it, about to head off the stage, and he jolts when he feels arms go around his waist. “For old times’ sake,” Louis says, and then Liam is stumbling—being pushed—sideways into Niall, towards Harry and Zayn beyond him, and they’re all hugging, the same tangle of bodies that’s going to feel familiar no matter how long it’s been. Someone’s hair is in his mouth, and they’re all damp with sweat, and it’s not the way they used to cling desperately, but it’s right. They couldn’t have ended the show any other way.

—

Liam dodges past a stray few blokes with cameras on the way into Harry’s from where he’s parked a few doors down. Harry’s probably got private parking, but he hadn’t mentioned anything in his message, so maybe it’s not on offer tonight. Or maybe he thinks they’ve all got drivers, which, in hindsight, Liam could’ve got for tonight. He’s buzzed in through the gate immediately, at least, before any of the paps have time to start shouting questions.

Today’s been a bit of a whirlwind—this morning, Harry had texted that _It was a good show, lads, but I feel like we can do better_ , and somehow that had turned into all of them at his house for dinner, because apparently none of them have anything else on tonight. Liam’s been jittery with it all day, half fear and half excitement, and he doesn’t trust either feeling.

He’s not been to any of Harry’s houses since the band split up.

Inside, it’s about what he would’ve expected, half classic and half modern, but it all somehow works together. At least, Liam thinks it does. There’s a massive abstract painting hung in the entryway, swooping arcs of bright colours that Liam is sure are meant to convey some message that’s going straight over his head, but he likes it.

Niall’s already settled on the sofa, a glass of wine in his hand. “Evening,” he says, clearly putting on some airs. Liam grins at him. 

“Where’s our host?” he asks. “Or did you just break in and help yourself to the wine?”

“You know me,” Niall says, and then, “Nah, Harry’s in the kitchen doing something. I’m sure he’ll be out to offer you wine any minute now.”

Indeed, Harry appears only a moment later, two more wine glasses in his hands. “Hi, Liam,” he says. He’s smiling, and Liam’s heart hurts from missing this. The way they all fit even though they shouldn’t have.

“Hi,” Liam says. “I like your painting, in the entryway.”

“Thanks,” Harry says, and he looks so pleased that Liam feels like he’s been thrown back decades into the past. All of this feels like that, really, the way they’re carefully testing each other’s limits again.

The doorbell rings, an earsplitting noise that actually makes Liam jump a little.

“Sorry,” Harry says, sheepish. “It’s the only way to hear it in the studio at the back and getting a new one put in is turning into a nightmare, something about rewiring half the house. There’s, like, a thing where to hook another speaker into the system they have to upgrade another thingy—” 

Niall shakes his head. “Just let the people in, Haz, it’s fine that your doorbell is loud.” 

The doorbell goes again while Harry says something about how Liam looked like he was about to shit himself, and all three of them jump.

“That’ll be Louis, then,” Niall says, and they all laugh.

In fact, it’s Louis _and_ Zayn, standing at the door but far enough apart that it’s clear neither of them is entirely comfortable with it. But they are standing there, and neither of them looks actively unhappy. 

From there, everyone gets settled into the living room. Wine glasses are distributed, and wine, and water. Everyone’s sat normally. Politely. Both feet on the ground, no one putting their shoes on Harry’s sofas or draping their legs over the arm of a chair or putting their feet in someone else’s lap. There’s not a lot of small talk, which Liam understands because he’s still not sure which topics are off-limits or will make everything deteriorate into a huge row. 

Harry takes a long sip of his wine. “So,” he says. “Do we want to do the post-mortem now or wait until we have food?” 

No one answers immediately. “Right,” Harry says into the silence. “With food, then. Someone please talk about something else for now, I don’t care what. Dog pictures? Baby pictures?

“You’re just angling for baby pictures,” Zayn says, and Harry shrugs.

“What of it?”

It works, at least. The tension eases a bit, smiles cracking again, and then Liam pulls his mobile out. Harry raises his eyebrows and Louis’s mouth quirks. “Not sure either of yours counts as a baby,” Louis says.

Liam rolls his eyes. “Ruth had another girl a few months back. Well, almost six months now, I suppose.”

That perks everyone up a little. “How many’s this now?” Louis asks. “Two? Three?”

“Four,” Liam says, and Louis looks so pleased that he’s actually speechless for a moment.

“Four nieces? Amazing, what a dream.”

Passing Liam’s phone around, and then Niall’s and finally even Zayn’s, gets them through enough time that they can eat, evidently. There’s a table laid out in the spacious backyard, looking like something out of a magazine. Three places on one long side and two on the other, no one at the head or the foot. 

“Right, then,” Harry says just as soon as everyone’s shoveled huge bites into their mouths. He looks around expectantly, watches them all chew for a few moments, and then continues. “It’s like I said earlier. Last night was alright, but I think we can do better.”

Liam glances around. Zayn’s watching his plate, Niall’s watching Harry, and, across the table, Louis is watching him. He could probably straighten his leg and let it brush against Louis’s. 

“I agree,” Louis says, the words clearly measured. He takes a deep breath, and Liam watches the way his shoulders rise and fall under his t-shirt. His shoulders are broader than Liam remembers, in the mental picture he has of Louis that’s really an amalgam of him from eighteen to twenty three. “I don’t want that to be the last show we ever do as a band. I want to end on a better note than that.”

When Liam looks over at him, Niall’s face is guarded in a way he’s not used to seeing. Zayn’s is too, but then—it’s pessimistic of him, but Liam’s not sure that they can ever really be put back together the way it was. The hurt’s not raw, and last night was good, but some broken things don’t glue back together perfectly.

Slowly, Niall nods. “We can do better than going through the motions,” he says, careful. His eyes catch on Liam, and Liam nods.

“We can,” he says. He tries not to let the churning in his stomach show on his face. There’s so many ways it could go sideways—he thinks about Niall’s annoyance with Louis, his hesitation even after Liam apologised. The way Harry’s been in a whole other world from the rest of them for so long. Zayn holding himself carefully apart.

It’s not like they all turn in unison to stare at Zayn, but as the silence descends, they all do turn to him, one by one.

Zayn sucks in a breath slowly, audibly. His shoulders rise and fall.

“I don’t want to make this my whole life again,” he says. His voice wobbles slightly. “It wasn’t good for me, before.”

Liam nods even though his stomach feels like lead. “Yeah?” he says, and his voice wobbles a little too.

Zayn nods too. “One concert was alright, but I think more isn’t the road I want to go down.” He pauses, glances around again. “Maybe another one-off show sometime, but not—not a tour or a long-term reunion or anything.”

This time, all the rest of them nod, not just Liam. It’s not like it was the last time, just a little twinge instead of a gutting, but it’s still enough to leave him feeling adrift. He’d let himself hope, for half a moment, but he was right: some things can’t be fixed. The things that broke fifteen years ago on the other side of the world can’t be put back as they were before, just taped up and held together, only stable enough to work for a little while.

There’s a strange timbre to Louis’s voice when he says, “Makes sense, mate. Don’t put yourself out on our account.” It’s not quite bitterness, not the way Liam remembers him as capable of, but there’s a hint of something pained in it still. 

The corner of Zayn’s mouth twitches, wry and sad. “You lot want to do the last album anyway, I bet.”

One at a time, they all incline their heads slowly. As Liam closes his eyes and dips his chin, all he can think is that at least time they’re being honest about it.

“Right,” Zayn says softly, and it’s only after he pauses, clearly startled, that Liam realises he’s spoken at the same time as Louis. He gestures for Louis to go ahead, and Louis shrugs one shoulder, accepting it.

“Right,” Louis repeats. “So that’s settled, then. Four of us in for—what, a proper reunion tour?”

Liam looks around at all their guarded faces, and he can’t help thinking about how the first time they tried this he felt like he was too shy to ever fit with the rest of them. At least he’s not the only one holding himself carefully around the rest of them, now.

“Let’s take our time with it,” he says. “See how it goes trying to put things together before we make any announcements.”

Harry grins. “A secret reunion tour, then.”

Down the table, Zayn snorts. It feels like another piece of the tension has chipped away, because Niall laughs, and then so does Louis. “Long as we don’t say anything, it’ll just be rumours for a while at least,” Niall points out. 

“They’ll guess right,” Liam points out. “Reunion is almost always the first rumour.”

“Hey now,” Harry says, his eyes flicking to Louis for a fraction of a second. “That’s an insult to all my secret marriages.” Louis’s lips twitch like he’s trying not to laugh. Liam feels a little better than he did an hour ago, and by the time the meal is breaking up, he’s something that’s starting to approach comfortable. 

Harry kisses them all on the cheeks to say goodbye, the kind of air kisses that Liam’s never quite got used to. Zayn doesn’t go for hugs or anything, but he doesn’t flinch away from Liam’s hand on his shoulder, and then Niall’s. It’s enough, a careful coexistence. Liam can live with this.

“You were quiet tonight,” Louis says after they’ve left Harry’s, their shoulders jostling a few times as they walk down the street towards Liam’s car. He’s not sure where Louis is parked, or if he got a car, or what. For all he knows, Louis lives walking distance from here. It seems unlikely, but then, stranger things have probably happened. 

“So were you,” Liam answers, too tired to pretend Louis isn’t right. 

“Didn’t feel like the time to be an arsehole,” Louis says, shrugging. 

“I suppose not,” Liam agrees, pretending his stomach isn’t twisting itself into knots. “I just didn’t want to make a mess of it all.”

“You won’t,” Louis says, warm and fond and everything Liam’s not heard from him in so long he can’t bear to think about it. Just the tone of it makes Liam want to curl up into his side, pull him close and cling for a few moments.

They don’t do that anymore, especially not on the pavement with god knows who lurking in the shrubbery waiting to take photos of Harry, or anyone else who happens to be passing by. 

“Right,” Liam says. He can hear the skepticism in his own voice.

Louis jostles against his arm, clearly intentional this time. “You won’t,” he repeats. “My car’s down here, but—it was good, tonight. Give us a ring about sorting out the music, you know it’s going to fall to us.”

Liam nods, trying to figure out how to respond to all of that in one go, but Louis’s already turned off down the road that Liam had been too distracted to even notice coming up on the left.


	2. stay for the night

That night, Liam drifts between sleep and wakefulness, half-dreaming, half-remembering a hotel on the other side of the world, the sheets crisp and fresh but unfamiliar the way hotels always are. The pillows not quite right, and the room too cold, full of air recirculated too many times. Liam remembers staring at the ceiling for what felt like hours, unable to keep his eyes closed, and shuffling out into the hall when he couldn’t bear it any longer. 

He remembers Louis stepping out of the elevator and the way they’d stared at each other until Louis had just shuffled down the hall and buried his face against Liam’s shoulder. Louis smelled of cigarettes and alcohol, smokey and sharp all at once. “Couldn’t sleep,” Liam mumbled into his hair. It was damp, with sweat or something else, Liam didn’t know.

“Me neither,” Louis said, muffled, and then, “Don’t wanna be alone right now.”

The details are fuzzy after they crawled into Liam’s bed together. Louis put the telly on, a low hum that filled the room with something other than Liam’s racing thoughts, and Liam managed to doze enough to miss it entirely when Harry and Niall came into his room.

He remembers waking up enough to realise they were all squeezed on his bed, though. They’d not done that in a long time, years probably. Not since they’d found their feet as individuals, more or less. Except—Zayn left, and it was like they were boys again, adrift and clinging to each other like they were the only familiar things in the world again. 

Louis was asleep against Liam’s side, pinning his arm in place so firmly that Liam knew it would be all pins and needles when he finally moved, and Niall was either asleep or faking it convincingly on Louis’s other side. On Niall’s far side, though, Harry was awake and scrolling through something on his mobile.

“Stop that,” Liam whispered, hoarse with sleep. Harry looked sheepish but didn’t actually do it.

“Was too curious about it all to sleep,” he murmured, glancing at Niall and Louis to make sure they weren’t waking up. 

Liam nodded. His mobile was across the room, just so that he could force himself to keep from scrolling through everything. “It’s just going to make you feel worse,” he said. Harry shrugged. 

“S’pose,” Harry mumbled. “Feel pretty bad already, though.” He looked up at Liam. “You should sleep,” he said. His voice was gentle, and Liam was too tired to do anything but listen.

The dream must turn to sleep eventually, because he wakes up to the sun streaming through his window where he left the curtains open the night before, but he’s unsettled and feels like he barely got any rest at all, his mind caught in the past instead of actually letting him relax.

Liam’s in the gym when his mobile starts to go nonstop, just text after text after text until he reaches over between sets to silence it. He didn’t exactly tell Alex what he was going to do last night, much less Glenn, who already thinks that Liam doesn’t communicate with him enough about the things he does.

It’s just, Liam doesn’t do much that calls for a publicist these days, and he didn’t want to talk about this beforehand anyway, but now Alex is blowing up his phone because, he sees once he actually checks, there’s a bunch of pictures in the papers of all five of them going to Harry’s last night.

 _CALL ME_ , the most recent message says. 

He does, bracing himself for the bollocking he’s sure to get. He’s kept to himself enough the last few years that he’d kind of forgotten just how quickly things can escalate. Everyone over at Harry’s the night after a reunion concert. Well, they won’t be saying he makes their lives easy for a while, especially not once he tells them what they’d decided.

Alex is already yelling down the phone at him when he actually manages to mention what their plans, cutting her off mid-sentence to say, “Thing is, we can’t deny the reunion rumours if anyone bothers to ask.”

“Liam,” she says flatly, and Liam has the overwhelming urge to shrug even though she won’t be able to see him down the phone. 

“We’re talking about a proper reunion,” he says softly, and her voice does something he’s never heard it do before, a sound that he cannot even begin to parse 

“Okay,” she says carefully, and then, “Do you want to ring Glenn or shall I?”

“I’ll do it,” Liam says. “I doubt anyone will actually ask us, I’m small potatoes these days. We can probably ignore it until there’s an announcement to make.”

She sighs. “It’s going to be a big deal,” she says. “People are going to hassle you a lot more. We’ll need to talk about things like security, what it means for Lina—and for Bear.”

“I know,” Liam says. “There’ll be a thousand conversations to have, but it’ll take a while to get everything settled anyway. Not everyone’s been laid as low as I have recently.”

When he hangs up, his hands are shaking. He’s still got to talk to Glenn, and Sam and Cheryl too, because if he’s doing this, it’s going to change a lot of things.

Liam doesn’t even know what it is that they’re doing, exactly. Nothing’s settled, just this idea of trying something. No timeframe or plans or anything more than an intention.

He showers, fixes himself a lunch, rings Glenn to get yelled at again, tries to explain himself in a way that isn’t entirely dependent on trying to explain how, instinctively, he always wants to plan things with the band first, before they show anyone else, actually goes. He’s tried before, and it’s hard to really convey it. The only person who even came close to understanding was his therapist, ages ago, and Glenn’s many things but a therapist he is not.

Still, Glenn works for him and he accepts the vague guidance with a fair amount of grace. “I’ll tell you more as soon as there’s more to tell,” Liam says before he hangs up.

He said he would call Louis. Louis wants to talk about music, which should maybe wait until they have more of an idea of what they’re doing, but Liam wants to let himself get wrapped up in the past. And it was the two of them first.

They’d made a whole production of it when they told Julian they wanted to be involved with the writing for real—”Not like the last album,” Louis said to him, standing as tall as he could and his arms crossed in front of himself even though Liam didn’t think Julian was going to put up a fuss about it. They’d been so young. “Not just a bit of fiddling with stuff that’s mostly done and our names on the credits,” Louis clarified.

“Yeah?” Julian said, looking only very mildly surprised. “You too, Liam?”

Liam nodded. “I was going to be more polite about it, but—same gist, yeah.”

Julian laughed aloud. “Course you were,” he said. He didn’t push back at all, just asked them if they had anything they were already working on or if they wanted to start from scratch. 

Looking back at it, there’d been more hand-holding than Liam was aware of when it was happening, but mostly he remembers being all of nineteen, sat with professional songwriters and playing them the scraps of melodies he’d come up with. He was half terrified and half giddy at first, but it settled eventually and started to feel like teamwork the way rehearsals with the band did.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the memories of all that. Staying up until all hours hunched over a digital keyboard with Louis, picking out melodies that sounded like they might turn into something. The first time he’d heard something he wrote come on the sound system in a shop, the way he hadn’t been able to stop grinning the whole time he’d been buying groceries. Seeing his name listed in the liner notes of a CD, knowing that the song it was attached to had been his idea from start to finish, his vision.

It had been addictive.

He phones Louis while he’s still half-submerged in his memories and is almost startled to hear his voice when he picks up, rough like he’s not fully awake yet. “Morning,” Louis says, and then, “Sorry, I was up late writing and then got caught up talking to Freddie.”

Liam hums. “Didn’t mean to wake you,” he says, not quite an apology. “You did ask me to ring.”

“I didn’t think it would be twelve hours later,” Louis says, but Liam can hear that he’s smiling now. “You’re eager!”

Pulling his feet up onto the sofa under him, Liam murmurs a response. “Guess so,” he says. “Been a while since I did anything like this, it’ll be an adventure.” 

“Yeah,” Louis says. His voice is soft, the way Liam remembers it being in the mornings and late at night, when he was worn at the edges and sleepy. “Think the others’ll be busier, we might need to pull together a lot of the behind the scenes stuff.”

“Just like old times, then,” Liam says, and he has to bite his lip and curl his hand against his thigh. He can’t get too excited about this. Just because it’s a risk worth taking doesn’t mean it’s not risking his heart. “We shouldn’t make assumptions,” he adds. “It’ll take a lot of planning.”

He can practically hear Louis shrug, and he knows it’s happening from the little hum Louis makes, the sound he always makes when he thinks Liam might be being reasonable but he doesn’t want to listen. Liam hates it just a little bit that all of these things are so familiar even now. “I know you’ve got thoughts about the music,” Louis says, and the thing is—Liam hasn’t, really, but now he wishes he did. 

Louis just does this to him, and he always liked it, liked being pushed a little beyond what he was comfortable with and nudged to do more. Louis was the first person he’d got drunk with, and the person who said “I bet you can’t write a song,” except he’d meant that he was certain Liam could do it, that Liam would rise to the challenge. It’s a headrush, even now when he’s meant to be an adult who’s settled in himself and his life, and he missed it.

“A bit,” Liam says. “Mostly just how we’ll probably have to redo the arrangements because our ranges have shifted.”

“We could pay someone to do that,” Louis points out, but there’s an edge of excitement to the way he says it.

“That’s no fun,” Liam says, because it isn’t, and Louis cackles. “‘Sides, they’re our songs.”

He’s smiling when he hangs up, and there’s a bounce in his step for the rest of the day that he wasn’t sure he was even capable of anymore.

—

“Right,” Louis says, setting his glass of water down on the table with a little too much force and giving all three of the rest of them the kind of commanding look he used to do when he had a scheme in his head. Liam used to do all kinds of stupid things because of that look. “Shall we do music first or logistics first? Or shall we just make the people who work for us all talk about the logistics?”

Harry makes a low noise and rustles in the pocket of the enormous jacket he’s wearing inside for some reason, producing his mobile a moment later. “Feels weird to outsource the logistics,” he says with a shrug that isn’t entirely casual. 

“Didn’t think you managed your own schedule these days,” Niall says with forced lightness, and Harry gives him a look. It’s half familiar, the kind of look Liam remembers, and half something entirely foreign, a new piece of the dynamic between them. 

“Got Jeff to send me my schedule for the next few months,” Harry says. “Felt wrong to be having other people figure this out.” Liam’s a little surprised, and a little guilty for being surprised. Just because Harry’s, well, the only one of them who’s really maintained superstardom doesn’t mean he isn’t going to take time for them now. He’s here, after all, at the dining table in Louis’s flat. 

Niall hums. “Well, might as well compare now to see what kind of timeline we’re looking at.” Liam can’t read his tone at all. Next to him, Harry’s already tapping at the small screen, his brow furrowed in concentration. Louis gets his mobile out as well, and Niall’s reaching for his. Liam’s pretty sure the only things he’s got scheduled over the next few months are one-off gigs and school things for Bear and Lina, nothing that can’t be worked around easily.

He looks around the flat while everyone else scowls about their schedules. It’s a little empty, in a way that reminds him of his own house except more so, because Liam’s at least got all the stuff Bear and Lina have accumulated shoved in his corners and strewn all over every table. Louis doesn’t have that, and it’s probably only half his life here anyway, he’s in LA so often. There’s a few pieces of art on the walls, and all the furniture matches in that way that screams that he paid someone to pick it all out.

Maybe his place in LA is homier, or maybe—Liam doesn’t really want to think about it. Louis hasn’t lived here very long, he doesn’t think. Maybe it’s just that. It’s just unsettling, how tidy everything is and how devoid it feels of Louis’s personality.

“I’ve got some stuff coming up,” Niall says. “Supposed to do a single for this movie, and then there’ll be some promo, but I think I can work around it.”

Louis nods. “I’ve agreed to a bit of writing but unless we’re planning to start writing new music for a reunion tour, it shouldn’t mess me up.”

Harry is still frowning, and he rubs his temple. “I’ve not got much on, but I think it’s possible I said I wanted some free time to start brainstorming for a new album.” He looks bemused, and then smiles. “Might get a bollocking if I go back on that, but I’ve been through worse.”

Everyone is looking at Liam. He swallows hard. “Haven’t had much going on lately,” he says. It’s an oddly embarrassing admission. He’s got two kids, one of whom lives with him most of the time, and it’s not like any of them need to work for the money, but he still feels strange about admitting to having basically nothing filling his days.

“That’ll make things easier,” Louis says, but there’s something off in his voice. Liam doesn’t want to think about it.

“If we’ve all got some time, we can, er, feel things out a little before we make any decisions?” Liam offers. He’s feeling very hesitant about it all this evening, off-kilter and inexplicably concerned that they won’t be able to fit back together any better than they did for the charity show.

That gets him smiles all around the table, and Liam can’t help it when he smiles as well. The music will be easier; if they can make the music click, everything else will fall into place. That’s how it worked before.

And it does click, at least enough to start, because it’s only a few minutes later that they’re all settled in the music room Louis’s got. Barely anything hung on the walls but he’s got a fully soundproofed room with instruments and a decent bit of sound equipment. Liam’s a little jealous, since he’d meant to get one set up and somehow it just never happened.

There’s a piano tucked in the corner, and an electric keyboard on the other side of the room. Two guitars. It’s clear that Louis works here with other people, which makes something distantly familiar clench in Liam’s stomach.

Niall’s already picked up the acoustic guitar, starting to fiddle with the pegs before Louis yelps, “It’s tuned!” before he turns back to finish disconnecting a tablet Liam hadn’t even noticed was hooked up to the keyboard. Niall strums a few times and must be satisfied, because he sits down and starts picking out chords.

When this was their job, they almost never did this kind of thing alone—there were always a thousand people around to help out, accompany them or walk them through vocals or whatever else. They’d fuck around with instruments sometimes, but rarely as a whole group. But then, that was near the end of it all. At the very start, they’d sung together a lot, when it felt like that was the only thing that worked.

Louis is sat at the keyboard, and Liam realises with a start that he has no idea if Louis has learned to play the piano properly or if he’s still just fudging his way through a few songs he’s memorised. 

Harry eyes the other guitar and then shrugs, dropping into one of the empty chairs and glancing at Liam as if to suggest he do the same. Liam does. 

The silence that follows is heavy for a few moments, and then Niall strums the guitar again. “If we’re going to sing, we ought to actually do that,” he says. “Someone pick a song.”

They’ve got no music, and they’re about to attempt songs none of them have performed in years alone, much less together. Liam’s fairly certain it’s going to be a disaster, but a bit of a disaster might be what they need to get them over the strange stiffness of it all.

“Something from the last album?” he suggests. “Or, er, anything we all think we remember.”

There’s a couple of soft chuckles—Harry and Niall. “Feel like we should remember it pretty well,” Niall says.

“Didn’t perform most of them,” Harry points out, sounding extremely reasonable but more than a little nervous. Maybe Liam should’ve suggested something they’d poured less of themselves into. Shaking his head, Louis pulls out his mobile and taps at the screen for a few moments. Infinity starts to play from the slightly tinny speaker, and Liam laughs.

“Good a method as any for picking,” he says, and then, “Might be useful to refresh my memory as well.” 

Sitting there in silence while the song plays through is odd, but it’s not so bad, actually. Liam mouths along in a few places, lets himself get into it a bit, and slowly he notices the others doing the same. Louis plays the song again after it ends, and they sing along with the recorded version of themselves like they’re singing along with the radio. It falls apart some when they try it again without the recording to help them, and Harry dissolves into a fit of giggles after he gets completely tongue-tied. 

That’s not so bad though, laughing over their own inability to remember their own lyrics. Louis plays through the album one track at a time, letting it shuffle, and they muddle through some more.

“We’ll definitely need some real rehearsals,” Liam says, but he’s laughing. 

“Nah,” Louis says. “Let’s just do this, it’ll be a laugh.”

Niall’s smiling, but in that way that makes it seem like he’s in pain. “I don’t think my label would like that,” he says weakly. “I’m meant to be a professional now.”

“We were professionals then,” Harry points out. 

“Didn’t feel like it, sometimes,” Niall says. 

They finally wind down when Harry starts changing half the lyrics to be about household appliances, though really Liam calls a stop to it all because Niall’s laughing so hard he can’t play anymore. 

It’s good. Liam feels good about it.

—

It takes less hassling than Liam would like to admit for him to agree to having Louis over for dinner and songwriting. 

“Well, song arranging,” Louis corrects, and then he adds, “Unless I get stuck on the stuff I’m meant to be writing and have to beg you for help.”

Liam can’t help thinking that sounds like it might be alright.

Louis comes over on a Friday night, when Lina’s at a sleepover birthday party for one of her friends and Bear’s not set to come over until midday Saturday. He grills Liam on exactly what kinds of equipment he’s got, scoffing when Liam says it’s basically just the piano, and that he’s got a guitar somewhere, maybe some stuff he could get on his computer.

“We’re doing this at mine next time,” Louis says in lieu of a greeting. “The piano will do for today but we’ll need something we can hook up to a computer next time.”

There’s more assumptions in that than Liam feels like he’s got the ability to deal with it.

“Hi,” he says, grinning despite himself at Louis’s persistent disregard for manners. “Would you like something to drink? Or a cup of tea?”

Louis accepts the offer of tea—predictable—and then hovers behind Liam while he fixes it. It feels like nothing’s changed at all, like Liam’s just stepped straight back into himself from when they were in a band together. 

They settle down next to each other at the piano, barely fitting on the bench, with Louis’s tea balanced on top of it. Louis’s got the actual music for a handful of their songs printed out, all five-part vocal arrangements, and it’s surprisingly, blissfully easy to just dive in. It’s older stuff, which means that there’s more to do on the arrangements, and also that Liam’s got less of himself caught up in it. Fond memories, for sure, and plenty of complicated ones, but it’s not like it’s the songs they pored over all night together. 

It’s easier to do this, to go along with Louis’s plans, than it is to think about how maybe the two of them shouldn’t be doing this alone. Besides, it’s only a few songs before Louis stands up from the piano, announces that he’s ready for a drink, and then helps himself to the beer that’s in Liam’s refrigerator.

When he returns, in addition to the beer, he’s got a stack of notes and a tablet in his other hand, and he drops them on the coffee table before he settles onto the sofa.

“Come here, Liam,” he says. “I want your thoughts on something else.”

Liam does, because he’s always been shit at saying no to Louis, and he’s not going to start now. Not when he might be able to actually have this back, this helpless, life-changing friendship that he was sure had been sacrificed to the tumult of adulthood but—Louis is on his sofa, looking happy and just a little sleepy, and he’s asking Liam to write with him. Liam knows what his songwriting notes look like, and they look like the papers strewn across the table.

“What’s this?” Liam asks anyway.

Louis puts his stocking feet up on the table next to the notes. Liam’s just glad he wears socks now. “Remember how I said I had some writing to do?”

Liam nods.

“Me and the band I’m working with had a session the other day, got some good work done, but I said I’d take the stuff we did home to polish it and something’s just not clicking.”

Liam sits down, trying not to sigh too heavily. “I haven’t done any real writing in ages,” he says, careful, but Louis just shrugs. 

“First time we did this, you’d never done any real writing at all,” he points out. “I trust your opinion, okay?”

Something in Liam shrivels up the way it did when he was first getting to know Louis and was constantly terrified that Louis was making fun of him. Which, in fairness, Louis had been a lot of the time, but it had been so long before Liam had realised that Louis wanted to impress him with how funny he was. That Louis wanted Liam to laugh along.

The first time Louis had admitted, exhausted and wrung out, that he was jealous of Liam’s singing, Liam was so bowled over he couldn’t speak for a full minute.

“Thanks,” he says, remembering the way Louis used to elbow him when he tried to squirm away from compliments. “Let me look at it, I’ll do my best.”

The notes on the table are lyrics, not quite organised into a song but the bones of it are there. Louis pulls up a few versions of the audio on his phone, playing them back a few times over while Liam closes his eyes and listens.

“What’s it meant to be like?” Liam asks, not opening his eyes yet so he can hold the melody in his memory better. “What’s the group like? Or the person?”

Louis makes a quietly frustrated noise. “I can’t say much, there’s a stack of NDAs about as high as my chin.”

It’s someone famous, then. Liam can’t help being excited for him, biting back a smile. 

“It’s meant to be peppy, though,” Louis says. “No one’s going to get pumped up listening to it as it is. Needs to be catchy, like.”

“Play the second version once more,” Liam says, eyes squeezed shut. He’s moving his hands in time with the music, gestures he’s sure look ridiculous but—it helps. “What if you made that bit swoopier?” he asks. “Like, leading up the chorus.”

When he opens his eyes, Louis’s nose is wrinkled up, but he sings a slightly different version of the line, making the pre-chorus, well, swoop a little more. The words still aren’t quite right, but it already feels better. Louis makes a pleased sound, and Liam lets their knees knock together.

“What if we—” Liam starts, and then he hums it again, making a few more tweaks. Louis hums it back at him, speeding it up as it moves toward the chorus and Liam actually yells, “That’s it!”

Louis hums it again, twice, and then records himself doing it while Liam grins at him. “Wait,” he says, and then he slips back over to the piano to pick out the right notes and records that. Liam watches his fingers slide easily across the keys, and even though it’s just a simple melody it’s clear that Louis has learned a lot since the last time they worked together like this.

Of course, this is his job now, so it makes sense.

Liam pulls one of the lyric sheets over to him. There’s a bit that Louis has marked as being a good chorus, and it could be but Liam squints at the words again. _Please please let me love you, please open up your heart to me, please please let me be the one for you._

“I think the chorus needs to be the bridge,” Liam says. Louis groans, and Liam laughs, helpless.

“I thought that when we were working the other day but I didn’t want to have to write a new chorus,” Louis grumbles.

“Come on,” Liam says, patting the sofa next to him. “It’s my fault, I’ll help you sort something out.”

Louis does.

It takes them two hours to get it sorted, but they do, because it turns out that they really do still work well together. Louis’s got the new lyrics—chorus and all—typed up in his iPhone notes, and a few recordings of different takes on the melody. Liam’s slumped back on the sofa, a half-empty beer from his own refrigerator held loosely in his left hand. 

“That was good,” Louis says.

“It was,” Liam agrees, and then, because he’s up past his bedtime and he’s a little giddy with what they’ve done, he says, “I’m glad we’ll get to perform the last album.” 

Louis makes a low noise, surprised but still warm. He turns to Liam, and Liam can’t look away from him. “Feel bad about it, though. Was nice to have Zayn back for a bit,” he adds.

“Yeah,” Louis says. “I dunno. I didn’t realise until we were all there trying to fit the pieces back together how much we changed after he left.”

Liam wants to let himself droop sideways, until his head is resting against Louis’s shoulder. “We changed because he left,” he says instead, shrugging. Louis spreads his legs wider until their knees bump, and then he leaves them there. The contact feels like an anchor, holding him in place.

“I’d kind of forgot how much,” Louis murmurs. “I was worried, when he left, that the rest of us wouldn’t all fit anymore. That it only worked with five of us.”

“Everyone was,” Liam says, just as softly. “After the break my mum asked me if it was because of that.”

“It _wasn’t_ ,” Louis says, too loud. Defensive. Liam understands, and it makes his mouth twitch with a smile.

“I know that,” Liam says. “It was just—everything.” He gestures with his beer. “Things were mad.”

Louis sighs. “It was getting to me a lot, in the end. I don’t know that I ever told you how much.” He shrugs, and the movement looks heavy. Liam thinks again about what Niall said about Louis, about all the silence between them recently, and he doesn’t know how to reconcile that with Louis on his sofa saying these things.

“You didn’t have to,” Liam says, barely more than a whisper. “I knew. We all knew.” 

Louis’s silence after that lingers, filling the air between them with something that’s not entirely comfortable. It makes Liam want to squirm or babble, fill the space somehow. “Harry used to ask me about how you were doing,” he says, which is maybe the wrong thing to say. “When things were really bad, because he thought you might talk to me about it.”

The way Louis’s mouth twists is something Liam’s not sure he’s ever seen before. He doesn’t know what it means. “Because he thought I wouldn’t talk to him about it,” he says heavily.

“Would you have?” Liam asks, skeptical, and Louis shakes his head. 

“The break was a good idea,” he says instead of a real answer.

Liam gives in and slips sideways until he can drop an arm around Louis’s shoulders. “It was,” he agrees. “Technically I think it’s still a hiatus, though. We could just pop off a new album and everyone would have to pretend they thought we would get back together all along.”

The suggestion makes Louis laugh, his eyes crinkling up. “That’d be a laugh. Can’t imagine anyone really thinking it would happen at this point.”

“I didn’t even, really,” Liam says. “Not after the break hit five years.”

Louis slumps toward Liam, curling up neatly under Liam’s arm. He still fits perfectly there, and it still makes Liam’s heart do stupid things. “I thought it would only be a few years at first, and then my whole life went mad, and then I kept thinking we would do something to celebrate ten years of being a band and then, you know, that whole year was mad. And then I thought I’d suggest something when people finally stopped with everything about me and Harry, and they never did.”

Liam squeezes Louis against his side. “Better late than never,” he says softly. “I think—I think we can still all fit, you know. The edges are a little bent but we can make it work. Everyone wants to.”

“I want to fit,” Louis murmurs. He’s getting sleepy, the words blurring together. His head is resting against Liam’s shoulder now, tipping towards his chest. Liam could be eighteen again, letting Louis curl against him on the tour bus, or twenty-one and struggling to relax in the tenth hotel room in as many days, or any of so many times they’ve all blurred in Liam’s memory.

“We do,” Liam says, and he lets the ends of his fingers tangle through Louis’s hair. It’s got long in the back, maybe the longest that Liam’s ever seen it, and it’s soft instead of tacky with product the way he remembers. “We will.”

—

They arrange a proper vocal rehearsal with all four of them, at a real studio with people to actually listen to them, but it’s not for a couple of weeks. Harry’s back in LA for a few days, and Niall’s got some mysterious but immovable commitment. Liam’s alright with it, since he feels like he needs to recover from letting Louis sleep on his sofa and then having breakfast with him the next morning.

There’d been bags under Louis’s eyes, and Liam hadn’t had the heart to wake him

Alex emails him almost daily with the highlights of what the tabloids are saying, an email she organises from least to most ridiculous. A few mornings after he and Louis had had their writing session, there were pictures of Louis leaving his house and pictures of Harry and Niall sat together at a restaurant, all under the headline “SPLIT DIRECTIONS?”

Liam had laughed despite himself and, when pressed, Alex admitted that she had too. 

Most of the headlines aren’t so funny, because they’re a lot closer to the truth. There is a proper reunion in the works, and they are going to have to announce it sooner than later, and once that’s done, all bets are off in terms of how mad things will get. Probably not quite like they were back at the height of things, but Liam’s not willing to stake too much on that. He reads his instagram comments.

It’s easier to throw himself back into the regular rhythms of his life than it is to think about that. Lina takes up plenty of his time, and he’s got Bear the next two weekends as well. Maybe he should take them up to visit Ruth and her girls, that would be a nice thing to do. He waffles over it for a few days, but there’s nothing to stop him except Bear’s grumbling about not being able to spend the whole weekend glued to his X-Box. 

He feels a little like he’s running away, but there’s no reason for that. Visiting family isn’t the same as running. 

Liam knows it was the right choice when he’s watching Lina scream and run around with her cousins, and Bear’s mostly let up with his grumbling and instead has settled on the sofa to watch telly with Ruth’s husband. Liam and Ruth are in the kitchen, and he’s fixing her a cup of tea.

Sometimes it’s odd being here, sliding back into the kind of life he imagined for himself when he was boy. He feels like he’s had to reimagine his life more times than he knows what to do with, starting when he was too young to even understand what he was doing, and then after every breakup and divorce and misstep.

Ruth takes a long sip of her tea, then sets the mug down on the counter. She’s giving him an assessing look, and Liam’s felt like he was a teenager again more than usual the last few months, but never more than in this moment. “So,” she says, sounding completely and wholly the way she did when he was a boy and she was about to grill him mercilessly because she thought he had a secret.

Liam gives her a look that’s perfectly, one hundred percent level and unrevealing. If all the years he spent having his every moment photographed taught him anything, it’s how to make that face.

Ruth clearly doesn’t buy it for a moment. 

“I found out about your concert from the papers,” she says. “ _Mum_ found out about it from the papers.”

Liam grimaces. He’s not got much to say for himself about that. “Sorry,” he mutters. It truly is like being a teenager again, right down to the shamefaced mumbled apologies.

“I’ve seen the pap photos, too,” Ruth adds. “Don’t think Mum’s seen those, lucky for you.”

Sighing, Liam leans forward until his forehead is resting against the counter next to his tea. This was more comfortable when he was twenty years younger and quite a bit shorter, but at least he doesn’t have to look Ruth in the eye. “How much of it is true?” she asks, unrelenting.

“Enough,” Liam says. “You know, the bits that sound reasonable are true and the other bits aren’t.” Reluctantly, he straightens up before his back starts to complain too much.

Ruth snorts, and then shakes her head. “I’ve got no idea what’s reasonable and what’s mad with you these days.” 

It stings, but it’s probably deserved. When things fell apart with Sam, and then with Becca so soon after, it had been surprisingly easy for Liam to just slowly phase out everything but parenting and the occasional DJ gig. Lina had been so little, needing so much from him. She still _is_ little. He’d done a remarkably poor job keeping in touch with anyone, including his family until Mum had rung him to cry about how long it had been since she’d seen either of her grandchildren.

The look Ruth gives him stings, too. “I saw the pictures of Louis leaving your house at the crack of dawn,” she says, and—she’s almost the only person in the world who has even a chance of knowing all the pieces of the story there. Not even the dodgiest of the papers went there, but Ruth knows entirely too much. Liam’s not even sure how much she’s guessed beyond what he told her outright.

“It’s not like that,” he says, completely aware that that’s just going to convince her it is like that. “We were just doing a bit of writing.”

“Is that a euphemism?” Ruth asks, and Liam groans. She’s guessed a lot, then.

“No,” he says. “We’re just giving it another shot at being mates again, all of us. Gonna do a proper reunion tour, celebrate twenty years since we were put together. We haven’t told anyone yet, not really. S’why I haven’t told you or Mum and Dad or Nic.” He pauses. “So don’t go telling anyone now, yeah?”

Ruth laughs. “Our secret. Unless you actually let Mum find out from the papers again. You know she’ll cry.”

Low blow.

“She’ll cry when I tell her, too,” Liam points out.

Ruth looks unconcerned. “She won’t be crying down the phone to me, though. Also, that doesn’t explain what Louis was doing staying at your house overnight.”

Liam is this close to walking out the back door into the garden to lie down in the grass so he won’t have to look at Ruth. “I told you,” he says. “We did a bit of writing, and he fell asleep on the sofa.”

“I didn’t realise reunion tours involved songwriting,” Ruth says, deadpan, and when Liam doesn’t answer right away, she adds, “Liam, he missed your wedding.”

“It was the second one,” Liam mumbles, but he’d been so upset he nearly cried at the time and Ruth knows it, so it’s a bit feeble.

She sighs, and closes her eyes for a moment. “Just—be careful, yeah?” It’s hard to be mad at her looking out for him, even when he’s too grown up to have needed it for a long time now. “I know how he gets under your skin,” she adds.

Liam doesn’t argue the point, even though he thinks it’s a little unfair for Ruth to be cross with Louis for missing Liam’s wedding to someone else _and_ for having broken Liam’s heart just a little bit years before. The fact that he was marrying someone else ought to have got Louis off the hook for the heartbreaking. He isn’t going to try and explain that to Ruth.

Upstairs, the baby starts to wail. It echoes tinnily through the monitor that Ruth’s got on the counter. It’s one of the old fashioned ones without video, the sound a little scratchy. “I’ll get her,” Liam says immediately, as much for the excuse to leave the conversation as for the chance to have a cuddle with a new-ish baby. It’s been a long time since he’s got to, and he misses the tiny fingers and the warm milky smell and the impossibly soft skin. 

She needs a change, but once that’s done he settles down in the rocking chair tucked in the corner and tucks her into the crook of his arm while she dozes. She probably won’t sleep much longer, since she’s already had a good nap, but she’s clearly not ready to wake up yet, either. Liam brushes his fingers through the fine hair on her forehead, and then carefully extracts his mobile to take a few pictures of them. There’s one where she’s got her fingers curled around his in that perfect baby way, and he considers instagramming it. If it weren’t Ruth’s baby, he might.

He could send it to the band group chat, instead. They’d appreciate it.

It’s odd to have one now, so many years on. They’d been asked about it constantly when they were together, and in the immediate aftermath of the break, and they hadn’t had one. It felt silly, when they were together all the time, and then when the break started, well. They all wanted a real break. 

Up to now, they’ve only used it for useful stuff, setting up rehearsals and making sure that all the right people are talking to each other. Sending a poorly lit selfie with a snoozing baby tucked against him isn’t that. It feels like a step forward, and Liam’s not sure if he’s ready to take it.

He could just send it to Louis, but that feels too intimate, somehow. Ruth’s got him thinking about the past too much. 

He sends it to all the lads, and then tucks the phone back in his pocket and braces the baby carefully against his shoulder to go downstairs. She’ll be wanting to eat soon, if the way she’s starting to squirm is any indication.

—

Despite Lina’s tantrum about leaving, they’re back in London only a little later Sunday evening than Liam had hoped. He’d had to cut the after-dinner call with Mum short, much to her dismay, but Lina and Bear really do need to get settled back in and go to bed in time for school in the morning.

He can call Mum later in the week, she’ll get over it. She’s got over worse.

More pressing are the messages that have piled up from everyone else, mostly Alex. There’s a few from Louis as well, which Liam is a little frightened to read. There were replies to the selfie he sent yesterday as well, but he’s certain those are mostly cooing. People change, but Liam doesn’t think any of them have changed so much they don’t coo about babies. If anything, he’s got worse about it. 

He ought to visit Ruth more.

Liam doesn’t have time to tackle the messages until he’s got Lina to bed, which she protests viciously. Bear offers to read to her, which Liam suspects is just so that he’ll be allowed to stay up later, but it’s so sweet that he can’t say no. He snaps a sneaky picture from the doorway, Lina tucked up against Bear’s side as he mumbles his way through the next chapter of her book. 

It reminds him of Louis, because apparently all it takes for him to be constantly reminded of Louis is staying up too late writing together one time. He should ring Niall, see if they can set up another time for him to come over and show Lina how to cook.

Instead, he sits down on the sofa and opens up his messages from Louis. He’s in LA next week, but he wants to do some more arranging with Liam this week. For half a moment, Liam imagines himself as someone who would say no to that, but it makes his stomach churn and besides—it’s what Niall said. They’re going to try to be people who like each other. It worked before, and Liam’s missed it down to his bones.

His fingers itch for the piano, but he can’t. If he had a proper music room like Louis does, with a keyboard that could be turned down low or plugged into his headphones, maybe. He could order one, have it delivered by tomorrow morning. For enough money some shop would probably bring him one right now. 

It’s too much, given that all he’s done for the last five years, aside from writing with Louis once, is noodling around with half a melody. He can work on it tomorrow, if he’s still thinking about it then. 

Of course, by the time Lina and Bear are bundled off to their respective schools and the destruction of their breakfasts is cleaned up, and Liam’s read all of his emails—well, most of his emails—it’s nearly time for lunch, and he still needs to exercise, and then it won’t be long before Lina is home. Bear’s back to Cheryl’s after school. He nearly forgets to answer Louis’s messages, reminded only when his eyes land on the piano in the middle of the afternoon. 

The memory of Louis’s fingers dancing across the keys is so fresh.

He types out a quick message saying that Louis should come over but that he’ll have to hang out with Lina—not really believing that this will put Louis off for a moment—and then orders a keyboard from the internet, sending Louis a screencap of the confirmation email. They can plug headphones in or turn the volume down after Lina’s asleep, since there’s no way they’ll get much done with her running around excitedly.

Louis’s answer comes quickly, a series of excited emojis and then, _Thursday good for you?_

Liam replies that it is, and then wastes half an hour at the piano, letting his fingers slide through the bits of melody he and Louis had worked on until it turns into the song he’s not letting himself believe he’s really working on.

He hasn’t written anything to speak of in a long time, much less sat down and written by himself, because he had something he wanted to get off his chest.

Thursday comes quickly, but not as quickly as the enormous cardboard box holding Liam’s brand new keyboard, which arrives Wednesday morning. He waffles over setting it up all day, then ends up having to do it frantically on Thursday afternoon, shoving it a little awkwardly in the bedroom farthest from Lina’s. There’s not quite room for it, but the only bedroom big enough to comfortably hold a full size digital piano is his, and he can’t let himself think about that.

Lina is nearly bouncing off the walls when she gets home from school, despite the paper shoved in her backpack about Liam needing to ring her teacher to set up a conference. He restrains himself from groaning about it where she can hear, but he knows he ought to ask. Tomorrow, he decides.

Louis is late, predictably, but he brings a truly outrageous amount of takeaway curry, so Liam doesn’t mention it. 

In the end, they’re too full of curry to do much more than collapse once Lina’s put to bed. Liam leads Louis to the room where he’s set the keyboard up, but Louis just flops onto the bed with a pleased noise.

“Good mattress,” he says approvingly, and after a moment’s hesitation, Liam collapses next to him.

“Too much curry,” he mumbles. “Too full to sit up again.”

“We’ll get to it eventually, once we’ve digested some,” Louis says. Liam about half believes him. There’s a good chance they both fall asleep here. 

Louis had spent most of the evening chasing Lina around Liam’s house, both of them squealing with giggles. It had made Liam’s heart ache, throwing half-buried memories of thoughts he never really let himself have back in front of him. Louis had fed Lina too much curry, and laughed when he convinced her to try his vindaloo, and she had just laughed back at him as he laughed at her, wiping her nose and her eyes.

He sighs, heavy and gusty, and Louis elbows him gently. “Something on your mind?” he asks.

“Got a note home from Lina’s teacher today,” he says. “Supposed to set up a conference next week.”

“What did she do?” Louis asks. 

“Haven’t asked her yet,” Liam mutters. “I’ll do it tomorrow. She was so excited about tonight, I didn’t want to have to scold her.”

Louis snorts lightly. “You’re a pushover, Payno,” he says, and Liam can’t argue with it.

He can’t help thinking about all the alternate versions of his life, and how there might be one where they’re having this conversation on the bed in Liam’s room instead of the least-used guest room, and instead of being Liam’s bed it’s their bed. It feels like the edges of his real life are blurring into one of the lives he imagined he could have, once. Or hoped, for a few ridiculous moments. Dreamed, maybe.

“She likes to try things,” he says softly. “She doesn’t like being told she can’t do something because she’s not old enough or not big enough.” Louis makes a low noise, and Liam smiles. “If I had to guess, someone told her she wasn’t allowed to do something because she’s a girl so she did it anyway.” He knows he sounds proud as he says it.

“Good girl,” Louis says, and he sounds proud too. He sounds the way he did when he first started being able to convince Liam to get into trouble with him. Liams’ stomach churns, and he feels his face get warm. “She reminds me of you,” Louis adds.

“You didn’t even know me when I was nine,” Liam points out, because he can’t think of anything else to say when his stupidest fantasy is half playing out in front of him and he still doesn’t even know if it was ever an option. If Louis ever looked at him and thought, _maybe_.

Or if he just saw a best mate.

“She reminds me of you when you were older,” Louis says. His voice is so soft, the way it used to be when they stayed up talking until the sky turned light again. “After you got corrupted.”

Liam can’t do this, he can’t lie here and listen to Louis say this and think about the what ifs of it all. He exhales slowly through his nose, and rolls to sit up with his legs over the side of the bed. “Come on,” he says. “You came over here to make me pretend I remember our songs, so let’s do that.” He doesn’t turn around to see if Louis’s face changes, or if his shoulders have gone stiff. He doesn’t want to know.

The keyboard is only a few steps away, and Liam adjusted the seat yesterday. The volume’s turned down low enough that he doesn’t think it’ll wake Lina, which means they won’t have to sit pressed up against each other sharing a pair of earbuds, at least.

“Alright then,” Louis says, groaning as he sits up. “Play us a song, Mr Piano Man.”

“That’s not the words,” Liam says, laughing despite everything. 

“Hush,” Louis says. “Play me something. I’m still too full to move.”

Liam, who is apparently still incapable of saying no to Louis under most circumstances, obliges him with a few bars of the song they worked on last week. He knows it’s not what Louis wants, but he can make Louis put in a specific request. Won’t hurt him to have to ask for something.

It takes a few minutes of nonspecific whinging before he does it, but once he actually says the words “No, play Drag Me Down,” Liam does it. He’d practiced a little last night, but he still feels like he’s stumbling through. Course, Louis’s not trying very hard either, singing hoarsely while slumped against the headboard. If they were really taking this seriously, they probably wouldn’t each have eaten their weights in curry before. 

“‘S’a good song,” Louis says. Liam nods, because it is, and then plays it again to get his fingers used to it. Louis doesn’t complain, just hums along in places and sings in others, softer than the song really demands. But it’s late, and Liam’s starting to get sleepy. His fingers want to drift into the melody he was playing the other night, but instead he picks out the notes of Long Way Down. Louis sings that one too, in the same low, almost sleepy way, and Liam focuses more on picking out the right chords than he does on whether he’s actually singing too. 

It’s not a rehearsal in any meaningful way, and they’re not doing the arranging they said they were going to do, but it’s too nice for Liam to actually say anything about it. 

—

Liam’s wrung out the next day, even though Louis left at a mostly-reasonable hour instead of falling asleep on Liam’s guest bed, and he catches himself taking it out on Alex. He can feel her trying to be delicate as she asks about their plans, and the pictures, which she’s evidently texted him about. 

He doesn’t want to snap at her, because she’s just trying to do her job. Even if it weren’t her job, she’d probably have questions. Ruth did. Liam has to take a moment to be grateful that his mum and dad won’t bother trying to find tabloid pictures online, and another to be grateful that he never confided in them about the things he’d felt for Louis years ago. 

At the time, he’d never thought that there might be a path for both their lives where they’d end up like this, single and nearly forty. 

He’s got nearly two weeks to fill before the next rehearsal, and Louis is leaving the country. He needs to ring his mum, and he could ask Niall over for dinner again. He could ask Alex to find something for him to do, but that just feels hollow. He doesn’t know what he wants to fill his days with, but it isn’t aimlessly appearing in places because people will be impressed by him doing it. He kind of doesn’t think he should be allowed to do that when he can’t impress his own sister or get his head together enough to call his mum.

Texting Niall is easier, even if his phone rings immediately afterward, an ancient and rather terrible picture of Niall popping up on the screen. He stares at the screen for a moment, and then thinks about what Ruth said about not even knowing what made sense for him anymore, and swipes across the screen to answer.

“Hi,” he says, and he feels like half the tension in his body evaporates when Niall does the same. 

“Hope you had a good weekend,” Niall says. “How’s the family?”

“Good,” Liam says, and then, too tired to maintain any pretense, “Mostly good. Ruth’s upset with me.”

There’s a noise that Liam thinks is a sigh, and then Niall says, “We can talk about it if you want, but you have to come over for dinner, and you have to bring Lina because she’s much better company than you are.”

Liam collapses onto the sofa like he’s a puppet with cut strings. “I can do that,” he says. “Is tonight too short notice?”

Niall’s laugh is warm. “For you? No,” he says. 

Lina’s going to be beside herself. At least it’s Friday, so if he can’t get her to bed at a reasonable hour she can make it up tomorrow, instead of Liam having to try and rouse her from a dead sleep for school.

Once he’s hung up on Niall, he gives himself a few moments to frown at the black screen of his mobile, but then he takes a deep breath and rings his mum. He should’ve done it days ago, but sometimes he just gets too caught up in his own head and talks himself out of doing it.

It’s a good chat, though. He tells her about Lina’s note home from school, which had turned out to be because she’d tried to climb on a stack of desks in a cupboard she wasn’t meant to be in at all. She hadn’t been hurt, at least, and as Liam suspected it had been because one of the boys in her class had told her she wouldn’t be able to. “But I did,” she told him triumphantly when he asked for her side of the story.

His mum laughs at the story, a little crackly over the phone connection, and her voice is so fond when she says, “She’s a troublemaker.” She’s got no idea of all the complicated feelings that have been stirred up in him over the last week, of what if felt like to hear Louis say that Lina reminds him of Liam.

“She doesn’t like being told she can’t do things,” Liam mumbles, and his mum laughs again.

“Neither did you, love.” 

Liam has to hang up shortly after that, because he’s in danger of getting weepy and he doesn’t want to set her off too. “Give Dad a hug for me,” he says. “I’ll ring him this weekend,” he adds on a whim. Once the words are said he’ll have to do it, though. He’d never forgive himself.

Lina does indeed start bouncing off the walls when Liam tells her their dinner plans, and she doesn’t stop even when they’re in Niall’s kitchen. Liam’s dropped a worn tote bag of groceries that he’s pretty sure can be turned into a decent meal on the counter, and set a six pack down next to them. “Good lad,” Niall muttered when he saw them.

Liam’s not completely worthless, he knows that it’s only polite to bring alcohol if you’re going to make your mate listen to you talk about what a mess you are. 

Fixing dinner takes rather longer than he’d thought it would, because Niall insists on showing Lina all of the things he’s doing, and she wants to try half of them herself. Aside from the ones that require knives, Niall lets her, even dragging a chair over so she can stand on it to stir things on the stove. For his part, Liam drinks most of a beer on an empty stomach and then spends a while sat at the table, nibbling on the crisps he’d bought on a whim. Turned out to be a good one, since he needs them now. Niall even drops a large glass of water in front of him, muttering that Liam’s tolerance is shit.

“Don’t drink much, these days,” Liam says, trying to keep his voice mild. Not entirely sure he succeeds.

Dinner is easy, though. Niall’s clearly happy to listen to Lina’s meandering recollection of her week, including her various scoldings. It’s a late dinner for her, and she’s clearly fading by the time Liam and Niall’s plates are empty.

“Sounds like you had a busy week,” Niall says. Lina nods, her eyes drooping. 

Liam picks her up before she actually faceplants into her plate, and she nestles her face against his shoulder the way she did when she was little. She’s not so little now, a heavy dead weight in his arms. He feels a little guilty leaving Lina asleep on Niall’s sofa, but she’s wrapped snugly in a blanket, and she’s got her kiddie mobile if she wakes up and can’t find them. She doesn’t wake up that easily, anyway, unless she has nightmares. 

Niall’s got a proper studio in his house too, tucked in the basement at the back. It’s fitted out nicely, a lot like Louis’s. He’s got a piano and a keyboard as well, and several guitars, and a drum set in the corner. Liam’d asked to see it, only a little bit to torture himself.

“You wanna play something?” Niall asks, and Liam can’t bring himself to say no. He’d forgot until the last few weeks just how much he missed just sitting around and making music with someone else, singing or playing or both with no real goal in mind beyond a good time.

“Show me how to play something of yours,” he says, and there’s a warmth to Niall’s smile that he hasn’t seen in ages. Niall motions for him to go to the piano and picks up one of the guitars. There’s a few chairs, and an extra bench at the keyboard, but Niall sits down on one of the amps. He strums a few chords, and Liam watches his fingers. Niall hums a few bars of the melody, and Liam places it quickly. It’s off his newest album, the one he’d said was heavily inspired by folk music. 

If Liam hadn’t—well, Liam regrets not being able to send Niall a text about it not being nearly rude enough about England to be inspired by Irish folk tunes. 

He hums along with Niall and plays a few halting chords on the piano. He can't quite pick out the whole melody yet, but if Niall keeps going he might be able to. 

Niall’s singing softly now, barely audible but Liam knows the words anyway. On the record, it’s a playful tune, the kind of thing that Lina likes to dance around her room to, but murmured with only an acoustic guitar and a few tentative piano notes it feels much more melancholy. The lines about what a great life the singer has feel more like a memory.

It’s not until Niall finishes singing that Liam realises he spent the second half of the song just listening, letting the sadness of it wash over him.

“Right,” Niall says, and he looks like maybe the emotion of it took him a little by surprise as well. “I’ve got the tabs around here somewhere.”

It’s a little more upbeat with both of them singing for real, Niall embellishing the melody in places. 

When they’d first got put in a band together, when Liam was trying not to let it show that he thought he was too good for them, he couldn’t have imagined that Niall might be able to create something like this. He couldn’t have imagined even Niall’s first album, much less the complexity he built in his most recent one.

Niall’s still playing, even though Liam’s fingers have stilled again, lost in memory. The melody has shifted, and he’s humming Slow Hands, which makes Liam laugh.

“Once I was in the car with my mum when that came on the radio,” Liam says. “I thought I might have to climb out the window, she got this look on her face like she was completely scandalised and then I had to tell her it was you.”

Niall just laughs. “It’s no worse than half the music we did in the band. What did she think all our songs were about?”

Liam covers his face with his hands. “I never asked,” he says. “We have a very healthy relationship where we both pretend neither of us has ever heard of sex.”

“You’ve got two kids, Payno,” Niall says. “The cat’s kinda out of the bag on that one.” 

“Hush,” Liam says. “We all have our coping mechanisms.”

Shaking his head, Niall starts playing again. “You need music for this one?” he asks, and Liam shrugs.

“I could sing without it,” he says. “Don’t think I can manage the piano, though.”

They sing Slow Hands twice, just vocals and the guitar, and it’s a little silly but that makes it better. It’s not really the kind of song to play with your mates, unless you’re willing to laugh about it. 

After, though, Niall stills his fingers on the guitar, which Liam knows takes real effort. Liam keeps his focus on the piano, even though the pattern his fingers want to play through is the melody that’s been stuck in his mind.

“So,” Niall says. “Your sister’s cross with you.”

Liam plays a dissonant chord, the words settling in the pit of his stomach. “Not as such,” he says. “She’s disappointed in me, I think.”

Niall sets his guitar down across his lap. “That’s worse.”

Liam already knows he isn’t escaping this grilling the way he did Ruth’s last weekend. There’s no baby upstairs to need a change, just Lina in the living room, and she’s probably out for the night. “She thinks I’ve done a shit job keeping in touch with her, and with Mum and Dad and Nic. She’s right, too. I have.”

The look Niall gives him stings the same way Ruth’s did. “She is, ‘cept she doesn’t even know all of it,” Niall says.

“I know,” Liam mumbles. He slides his fingers across the piano keys, not pressing them, just to have something to do with his hands that isn’t too obviously fidgeting. Niall will be able to tell, but it’s better than mussing his hair or fussing with his clothes. 

Niall sighs, and his eyes catch on Liam’s fingers that are still moving. “What happened, Liam?”

Liam knows he ought to answer, that Niall deserves honesty from him about this, but he can’t shake the fear that if he starts to talk about it, he won’t be able to stop the words until they’ve all spilled out, even the ones he’s not ready to say yet. 

Niall clears his throat. “Saw the pictures of Louis leaving yours last week as well.” He’s clearly hinting at something, but Liam’s not sure what. It isn’t what Ruth was implying, not unless he’s learned to read minds. Still, he can tell that Niall’s pressing for answers, and he ought to find a way to give at least some of them.

“Saw the pictures of you and Harry,” Liam replies mildly, and Niall just shrugs. Liam knows the attempt to change the subject wasn’t subtle. Niall’s strumming at the guitar again, in the way he has of always playing any instrument that’s in front of him.

“He’s a mate,” Niall says. “Just having lunch with a mate.”

Liam feels his mouth twitch. “Not what the papers said.”

Niall shrugs. “We have lunch sometimes. He never dodged my calls.” He pauses. “Well, he never dodged my calls much.”

Liam resists the urge to quirk an eyebrow at Niall. There’s that thread of tension in his voice, for a moment, but it passes as he continues. “Before this we usually kept it quiet, cause it makes the gossip rags go mad, but I didn’t stop speaking to him for the better part of a decade.”

When the silence gets too heavy, Liam prods the piano keys again a few times, plays a few more dissonant chords. “It wasn’t just you,” he says, finally. “I mean, I told you why Ruth is upset, and my mum and dad were too.” He takes a deep breath. “Made my dad cry, I think.”

“Oh, Liam,” Niall says. He doesn’t reach for Liam the way he would’ve, before, doesn’t pull him into a cuddle.

Liam turns, forcing himself to look Niall dead in the eye. He has to steel himself before he manages to speak, but he does it. “I’m not ready to talk about it yet, but if I promise I will tell you can we let it go for now?” There’s things he knows he can’t tell Niall first, but he doesn’t have the words for that yet, either. At least Niall is comfortable enough now to press. He can cling to that until more things settle in his mind.

“Okay,” Niall says. His face is a little more closed off now than it was while they were singing, but then, that’s what Liam deserves for not being able to put anything into words yet. 

Liam plays a few bars of the song Niall walked him through earlier, just to steady himself, and then he says, “I let everything get messed up in my head and it got to be too much to handle. I didn’t know how to talk to anyone.”

This time, Niall does set the guitar down to wrap his arms around Liam. Liam thinks he feels the ghost of a kiss on the top of his head, but he also hears Niall say, “Say what you will about Harry, at least he doesn’t do that.”

“It’s not like he called me!” Liam huffs, feeling defensive, but even as the words come out of his mouth he knows it’s a weak excuse. Niall laughs softly, and Liam can feel it where Niall’s chin is resting on his head. 

“Phones work both ways,” Niall points out, sounding completely and totally like Liam’s mum. “You know what he’s like.”

Liam does. Occasionally a little prone to fixating on something new and forgetting all the rest of his life, but never cross about being drawn out of it. Once Liam’d got past the initial crushing anxiety that no one that effortlessly charming could like him, he’d never had reason to doubt it. Not that doubts listen to reason, really.

“I do,” Liam says. “He picks up the phone.”

“Yeah.” Niall’s voice is soft, too. “I didn’t have to chase him down.” _Unlike you and Louis_ goes unsaid. Liam doesn’t need to hear it, anyway. And Niall’s not wrong in his assessment, same way he wasn’t wrong when he said that Louis had been a bit obsessed with Liam. That relationship had been a lot of things, but it wasn’t simple the way his friendship with Harry was, or straightforward like being mates with Niall.

Niall unwinds himself from around Liam and reaches past him to start playing a silly little tune that Liam can’t quite place, and Liam can tell as well as anyone when the serious part of a conversation is over. 

—

It’s not that in-home studios don’t feel like studio spaces, but there’s something that sits differently when it’s a real one in a professional space, with more people than just them clustered around to guide them through it all. It feels serious, instead of some mates messing around, and maybe at the end of it they’ll be a little better than when they started.

Harry’s got his fancy vocal coach Liam’s heard about in the papers with him, and now that he’s been introduced around they’re speaking softly in the corner. Liam knows it’s unkind of him to imagine that Harry would be the one to not take this seriously—it was his suggestion to do it properly, after all—but it’s hard sometimes, when Harry’s got the career he does. 

It’s another moment where it feels like Liam’s seeing two versions of the people around him again. This Harry, grown and distant and unfathomable, and the Harry he knew in the band who was still unfathomable, sometimes, but that Liam had learned to make sense of in bits and pieces and late night talks and adventures. He wonders if the others can see him like that too, all their memories of him tangling with the way he is now.

He’s grateful when they get started, because it drags him out of his thoughts.

There’s no setlist yet, not even a draft of one, so they just pick songs as they think of them, the other people in the room throwing out suggestions as well. It’s clear Harry and Niall have been practicing on their own, and Louis doing more than what he’s done with Liam, but things still don’t fit perfectly. There’s gaps, where Zayn used to be and they never properly filled in, or where their own voices have changed. They all sound so different now, so many of the melodies written for teenagers.

Liam doesn’t expect it when Louis is the one who jumps in after a truly fumbling rendition of Through the Dark that completely fell to pieces at the end. 

“We managed it a few weeks ago,” Niall is muttering, and Liam doesn’t point out that a few weeks ago, they weren’t reshuffling the vocal parts _and_ it wasn’t exactly great, just good enough to get away with in a loud stadium. Of course things sound worse in a room where it’s just the four of them with some basic accompaniment. But then, Niall knows that, and Liam’s not going to explain it to him like a wanker. They’re all trying harder now, letting themselves be invested enough to care about the result. Liam can tell.

And then Louis is saying, “So,” in that voice he gets when he’s going to make a pronouncement, and he’s explaining how he—with some help from Liam—has been poking at doing updated arrangements of the songs, so they could try running a few of those.

Liam’s not sure how he’d have mentioned it, himself, but he thinks it wouldn’t have been like this. 

Louis looks pleased with himself for a few moments too long, even as Liam is watching Harry and Niall’s faces harden. He takes a deep breath, wishing that Louis hadn’t mentioned that he’d helped. Thinking that maybe he shouldn’t have helped, because it wasn’t really how they did things.

“You did what?” Niall asks, but Liam can hear the tension under it. Harry hasn’t said anything, but he’s scowling and he’s got set to his jaw that he only gets when he’s really angry. It’s not something Liam’s seen for a long time, and not even all that often even when they were living in each other’s pockets. Neither Harry nor Niall was much for yelling matches, that was always his and Louis’s purview. Zayn’s sometimes, too, when he was provoked enough.

The way Louis shrugs, seemingly casual but Liam can see through it immediately, does not mollify anyone. “Seemed like it might speed things up,” Louis says. “Get a head start on having everything sorted for us to actually rehearse.”

Harry hums. Liam doesn’t like the sound of that.

“Been writing my own music a hell of a lot longer than you ever spent writing music for me,” Niall says. 

Louis holds his hands up, mock-defensive. Everyone else in the room is very deliberately not meeting Liam’s eyes, like they know this isn’t for them and that they just happen to be witnessing it. It’s what happened back when they were actually a band and would have a row over something in front of their staff, and it’s oddly familiar for it. All the times tempers boiled over in hired cars or surrounded by security or in hotel rooms trying to write or record. 

“It just seemed like it might speed things up,” Louis says, his voice all smooth and conciliatory. He never used to use that voice on them, that voice was for paps or interviewers or whoever else. “Since it’s my job now and all.” Liam’s just thankful he doesn’t use the fact that Liam went along with it as support for his position. 

“That’s not how we do things,” Harry says, and it’s not laced with anger the way Niall’s words were. He sounds more sad than anything else. “You don’t get to just make decisions for everyone, we do it together.”

It makes Liam’s stomach ache. Harry’s right, of course. They always used to vote on everything, three votes wins. It was better when everyone agreed, though. 

Louis doesn’t seem to have an answer for it either.

“You did it with the setlist for the charity show, too,” Niall points out, his voice still hard. “We should’ve made that together.”

“I asked if anyone wanted to make any changes to it,” Louis says, the smallest edge of snarl in his voice. He’s getting his back up now, this won’t end well, and Liam’s not sure he’s willing to step in to stop it.

“You left off songs you knew were important to us,” Harry snaps. “Were we just supposed to beg to get the things we wrote on there?”

“Well, it’s not like I could include the last album, so of course things got left off.”

Harry’s voice is hard when he says, “Sorry, I forgot that Don’t Forget Where You Belong was on the last album.”

Louis breathes out harshly through his nose, and he doesn’t say anything. There’s probably a reason he left it off, and Liam could probably guess it. Something about not wanting to make anyone give too much of themselves unless they wanted to. It’s the kind of thing Louis worries about, how much of himself he’s putting out into the world for anyone to see. And of course he thinks about it for other people, too. Just because he’s older now doesn’t mean he’s not himself.

Niall’s not meeting anyone’s eyes, and Liam can’t tell if it’s because he’s upset or because he doesn’t want to be drawn into the argument fully.

Liam’s getting off a bit easy, he’s pretty sure, but he doesn’t feel like he wants to direct their anger at him. He did help Louis, though. He knew he shouldn’t have done it, and he did it anyway, because Louis’s full attention on him is still something he’s absolutely shit at saying no to. 

“You did this before,” Harry says, and now Liam thinks he might cry, and he’s not at all prepared for that. He knows, from having known Harry so closely for the years they spent in a band together, that sometimes Harry cries when he’s angry. “You made decisions for everyone instead of letting us all have a say. You just decided how things would be, and that’s how they were.” 

There’s a thousand little things Harry could be talking about, things Liam remembers happening and things he was never privy to, and he kind of thinks Harry might be talking about all of them. 

That’s probably why he’s being let off the hook, because everyone knows that when Louis says jump, Liam says how high. It’s a bit embarrassing, that he’s a grown adult with two children and he’s still this person, but there’s something reassuring in how Niall and Harry can still see right through him.

“Harry,” Louis says, and he sounds—he sounds something, but it’s not contrite.

Harry rolls his eyes. “I’m going to get some water,” he says, and then he walks out of the room. It’s not really storming out, because he doesn’t stomp or slam the door behind him, but it does feel like there’s a stormcloud swirling around him as he leaves. 

Louis stands there for a moment, blinking, and then he says, “Should I go after him?” and it’s like he genuinely doesn’t know. Liam doesn’t either; if he was Harry he’d want to be left alone, but he isn’t Harry, and his relationship with Louis isn’t Harry’s.

“Yeah,” Niall says. “Think so.” There’s a pause, heavy, and he adds, “Not like all the times you didn’t fixed anything.”

When the door falls shut behind Louis, and it’s just Liam and Niall and all of the people here meant to be here helping them learn to sing their songs again, Liam awkwardly mumbles something about how it seems they’re taking a break and everyone can have 15 minutes for a snack or a smoke or anything they need. 

At least, after that, they’re alone. Not that Niall looks particularly pleased with him right now, 

“You know what that was about?” Liam asks, just to break the silence. He’s got plenty of ideas.

“The usual,” Niall says. “I imagine.” 

Liam sighs. “I thought Harry might’ve said something to you, at some point.” He wishes he had something to do with his hands. “He never would’ve told me, I think he assumed I would’ve told Lou.”

“Wouldn’t you have?” Niall asks.

It’s not like Liam can say no, not without lying, and Niall knows that. At least he does Liam the decency of not commenting on how useless he is at saying no to Louis.

“I’m going to the gents,” Niall mutters instead, and Liam thinks of all the arguments Niall dodged over all the years they were a band. It feels like that again, but Liam doesn’t stop him. Maybe that’s how Niall made it as long as he did on speaking terms with all of them.

It feels like a long time before anyone else comes back into the room, even though it can’t actually be. No one else has come back yet when Harry and Louis shuffle in, both of them looking at each other warily but, at least. no longer seemingly hostile. Harry’s eyes are red, just a bit, which Liam feels awful about. Louis’s hair is mussed like he was running his fingers through it, which he probably was. Liam has no idea what they talked about, or rowed about, except that it was probably a long time coming. 

Niall rejoins them before Liam even has the chance to ask about anything, which means he was probably waiting for them so he wouldn’t be alone with anyone. He’s slumping a little, the thing he does when he doesn’t want anyone to pay attention to him.

Louis clears his throat. “Suppose I should apologise for messing around with the music.” He does actually sound contrite now, at least. “Should’ve got everyone involved, instead of just Liam.”

Harry and Niall both nod. Liam mumbles something that doesn’t come as close to being an apology as it should. No one else is back yet, at least.

“We could call the rest of today off?” Louis offers, the corners of his mouth turned down. “Maybe come up with some setlist possibilities before our next session and compare?”

Liam doesn’t want to do that, doesn’t want to leave things like this. He’s not the right person to say it.

Luckily for him, Harry shrugs, the corner of his mouth turning up. “Be a shame to waste the studio time,” he says softly. “We could just mess around a bit.”

“We’ve done a lot of that,” Liam says. “I don’t want to have anyone feel like they’re wasting their time.”

Niall sits down on one of the chairs and picks up the guitar that one of the others was using. “Messing around made us better the first time, no reason it’ll be a waste of our time now.”

By the time the paid accompanists and coaches are back, Harry’s at the piano attempting to play the melody of a song that’s definitely about how evil the English are, based only on the chords Niall’s strumming. It’s going very poorly, and Niall is laughing, and even Louis is cracking a smile. The weight in Liam’s stomach lightens.

—

Typing out a message to Zayn, even the short and casual one he’s got written, feels like something from another lifetime. He isn’t even certain it’s a good idea to send the message, even something that’s just testing the waters. But then, they always said that no one but the five of them could understand, and that’s kind of still the case. Even if Zayn gave it up sooner, drew a line under it in a way the rest of them weren’t willing to. At least not openly, publicly. He still knew the ins and outs of them as a group in a way that no one else ever would.

Liam doesn’t let his hands shake as he sends the message, but he does tuck his mobile away for the drive home as soon as it’s done. He doesn’t need to know if Zayn responds right away, and he can save the worry about having overstepped for when he’s back home, or perhaps for late tonight after he’s put Lina to bed and settled in front of the telly.

The memories of the shows all blend together now—stages and crowds aren’t so different from each other, after all. Sometimes he can’t even remember clearly if a show was before or after Zayn left, which lines he sang in which city all gone hazy with time. 

He doesn’t remember noticing the way Zayn changed beforehand, wasn’t able to pick out the signs even in the immediate aftermath. He does remember the first time he sang You and I, the fear that he’d whiff the high notes churning in his stomach with the feeling that this was all wrong and that it wasn’t his right to sing it at all. He remembers the days after Zayn had left, but before he’d _gone_ , and how Louis’s scowl got deeper every time he checked his phone.

Louis never said, but Liam guessed even before they heard officially, that Zayn wasn’t answering his texts. He wasn’t answering Liam’s, either, but Liam was sending fewer of them and with fewer expectations.

Liam’s phone buzzes in his pocket as he sits at some traffic lights, but he isn’t going to check it. There’s no reason it has to be Zayn, and there’s no real reason to expect Zayn would answer at all. They left things better, after the charity show, but there was a lot of space between that and actually good. 

Even now, Liam doesn’t know who’d been the first to turn vicious. He hadn’t wanted to ask at the time, scared that the answer might be Louis and that he would have to—deal with that, somehow. Louis had spent a lot of time hunched over his mobile in the days and weeks after, scowling and typing away, and it’s not like Liam was so blinded by affection that he couldn’t see the piece of Louis that wanted to lash out when he got hurt. 

It’s not like he wasn’t hurt too.

But it faded with time, and it got easier to see it generously. If Liam had been the one to realise, suddenly, that he needed to be gone, he doesn’t think he could’ve sat down for a band meeting and put it to a vote, or let the others try to talk him out of it. He would’ve crumpled immediately under the pressure, let himself be drawn back in.

He doesn’t check his messages until he’s inside and has got himself a glass of water. He’s leaning against the counter to do it, the same place he was when he saw the email asking about the reunion show. _Didnt expect to hear from you so soon_ , the message says, and then, _Hows reunion stuff going?_ It’s—it’s kind of how someone who wasn’t ever part of them would ask, but that’s better than not asking.

And, for better or for worse, Liam feels like he can answer honestly. _Harry n Louis rowed haha_ , he sends, and gets the immediate response of a series of eyeroll emojis. Zayn doesn’t ask what it was about, but sending the message doesn’t feel like inviting someone into an intimate circle they have no right to. It’s not like Zayn needs to let gossip or rumours or the secondhand knowledge of an argument shape his opinion of them, not when he’s already seen the worst of them firsthand in more ways than one.

Liam sets his phone down after that, taking a few deep breaths as he reminds himself that it’s never going to be fixed and that he can’t hang his hopes on that. It will, at best, be a shattered bowl that’s been glued together and that you can’t eat out of anymore, but maybe it’s fixed enough to sit on the counter holding the bananas. Still useful and valuable, even if it’s not what it was originally.

Before this year, the last text he’d got from Zayn was back in 2015, and it had said, _tell louis that he can go fuck himself and that im blocking his number_. The number hadn’t been saved, but Liam didn’t exactly need it to know who it was from. Liam had never relayed the message, unwilling to be the bearer of bad news when he knew Louis was in a shoot the messenger mood. He’s fairly certain that Louis got the gist of it, anyway. 

He’d never answered the message either, too much of a coward to face that either. Not that it would’ve helped, or that he wanted to help things at the time. 

In the present, he picks his mobile up and texts a short apology to Harry and Niall for letting himself get caught up in Louis’s ideas.

—

Alex invites herself over for lunch the next week, texting Liam in the morning that she’s coming by unless he tells her not to. When she shows up like this, it usually means she’s planning to talk business, and as such it’s not a surprise that she’s got a folder tucked under her arm when he lets her in.

The first time she did this, years ago, Liam had asked and she’d explained that she doesn’t like her office and, anyway, here she can make Liam call for a pizza and they can eat it on the sofa while they talk about all the boring stuff. That was the moment, so early in their professional relationship, that Liam had known he wanted to keep her on.

Alex has been around since before everything truly fell apart with the band, in the way he thought was final. That’s an odd one to think about.

Now, after years of it, they just settle on the sofa to wait for the pizza. Alex won’t talk any shop until she’s fed, and Liam knows better than to try. Once they’ve inhaled most of the pizza, though, she drops her folder on the coffee table and turns to face him, one knee pulled up onto the sofa.

“Things are going to change a lot over the next few months,” she says, not bothering with any preamble. “Things are already changing.”

He’s noticed, of course. There’s been paps outside his house a few times recently. Not the scenes he was used to in the band, walls of cameras flashing as soon as he stepped outside a building, but more than he’s been used to. There’s been headlines, too, and it’s only going to get worse, and he needs to be ready for it. 

When Liam nods, Alex continues. “We’re going to need to do more to manage your image than we have been, and you’ll probably need to start doing interviews occasionally. There’s also going to be a lot of logistical stuff to go from a few rehearsals for a one-off concert to an actual tour. Not to mention the fact that we’re dealing with about a thousand different labels and management companies, but that’s my problem rather than yours.”

It’s a lot to think about, even if Liam’s been aware that it’s going to be necessary. There’s a lot of space between thinking about how something will need to happen and Alex sat on his sofa next to him with papers full of notes about all of it.

It must show on his face, because Alex laughs. “Hey,” she says. “It’ll be good. I wouldn’t be doing all this if it wasn’t going to be good, I’d have told you it was a terrible idea and not to waste your time.”

“I know,” Liam murmurs. He’s just a little overwhelmed, is all. Tacking the professional stuff on top of all the emotional stuff they’ve only just started even trying to sort out. Just more scary things he needs to do.

He clears his throat, forcing the unexpected lump that’s risen up in it back down. “What’s the timeframe looking like for getting everything pulled together?”

Alex sighs. “There’s a lot of moving parts. And a lot of people with a lot of feelings on how it should be framed.”

Liam rubs the bridge of his nose. “Whether it’s a reunion or just a reunion tour?” he asks.

“Among other things,” Alex mutters. “I’m going to email you a list of options that you have to rank for me on that one.” Liam groans. “Once that’s settled, we’ll start on preliminary announcements, hopefully in the next six weeks. Then it’ll just be a matter of nailing down a tour schedule and getting that organised.”

It sounds like a lot. It sounds like it’s going to take a while. Six weeks just for an announcement is a long time. He nods, trying to buy himself a moment to mull it over, and has a moment of awareness of how much better he is than he used to be at thinking before he speaks. It’s always a surprise when he notices it, that the words don’t just bubble before he’s even decided whether it’s really what he wants to say, the way they used to.

Except when he’s with Louis.

“Cool,” he says. “Just send me the stuff, I’ll get it back to you.” He doesn’t want to sound glib, not about this, but he doesn’t know how to balance sounding professional with the strange feelings churning in his belly. 

Alex’s smile is a little tight, and Liam suspects she knows at least some of what he’s not saying. “For now, it’s all right that you four are organising most of the rehearsals,” she says, her voice measured. “Eventually we’ll need to get more people involved, but that’s a ways down the road yet, and—” She cuts herself off, her mouth turning down into an odd shape briefly. “I don’t want to speculate, you know—”

Liam laughs, helpless. “It’s fine,” he says. “It won’t be the weirdest speculation I’ve heard.”

That doesn’t seem to comfort her, particularly, but it does get her to finish her sentence. “I’m assuming that at this point it’s as much getting to know each other again as it is actual vocal rehearsals,” she says. 

“‘Course it is,” Liam says. He wants to be relaxed about it, tries to project someone who can talk about this calmly and with a normal amount of feeling. He’s not sure it works, and he’s not sure that Alex would be fooled even if it did. She knows plenty—maybe more than plenty, he’s never asked her about her time as a fan, except he knows that it happened, and that she’s been weird about it. “It’s been years since we worked together, yeah? And even if it’s not how it was before, we need to connect some.”

“‘Course,” Alex says. “I imagine that you lot want to do that on your own terms, so I’m happy to continue butting out. Just put things on your calendar so I don’t double book you when things get busier.” And then she’s off the topic entirely, back to the details of everything that needs to be planned. Everything Liam’s going to need to do in the coming weeks, a long list of tasks and plans. 

Liam thinks they’re done, or nearly so, when Alex puts down all her papers and sets her mobile carefully on the table next to them. “Listen,” she says softly. “I know you take privacy really seriously these days, which is why I haven’t pushed on this before, but if there’s anything that might come to light now that you think I should know about, now’s the time to tell me.”

There’s not much, really. Alex knows about everything with Cheryl, and then with Sam and Becca, and none of it’s particularly juicy. The stuff with the band—well, she doesn’t know as much of that, but there’s no chance of it coming to light, either. Even when he hadn’t spoken to them in ages, Liam trusted all of them to keep those secrets.

He swallows, and then takes a deep breath when that’s not quite enough. It’s not like he’s never told anyone before. Ruth and Nicola know, and so do Sam and Becca. 

“Liam?” Alex says gently, and she sounds so concerned that it’s actually easier.

“It’s nothing bad,” he says quickly. “It’s just—after the band, and then after Sam, before I met Becca, there were a few. Well, a few lads. Men.”

Alex frowns. Liam has to review what he said to see if it makes sense, and then try again when he realises that, perhaps, it did. “I’m bisexual, I guess,” he says. “I got off with lads a few times, a while back.”

“Oh, Liam,” Alex says, and it sounds exactly the same as Ruth and Nicola had when he told them, fond and a little surprised. Then she hugs him, and Liam laughs weakly into it. Her arm tightens around his back, briefly, and then she pulls away.

“Sorry I never told you,” Liam mumbles, feeling sheepish and teenage. “It never seemed like it was liable to come up, since it was just some one-offs in clubs and the like. But I suppose if we’re doing a reunion someone might decide the tabloids would be interested.”

“Suppose so.” Alex is nodding, her face a little sad now. “I hope not, I don’t want that for you.” She pauses for a moment, touches his shoulder lightly. “But we’ll be prepared, just in case.”

Liam wants to hug her again and, after a second of hesitation, he does it, squeezing harder than he had before. Telling someone professionally is different from telling his family. Even if Alex is whispering while he squeezes her, a soft, “As your friend, thank you for telling me” that makes Liam feel like he’s going to cry. It takes him a bit to feel like he’s really composed, even after he pulls away from the hug.

“On an unrelated note,” Liam says, finally, trying to keep his voice light. “I think I’d like to do some more DJ gigs before the tour. Just to get back into things a bit.”

Alex looks startled, probably at the abrupt change of subject, and then pleased. “What are you thinking? You’ve been doing about one a month.”

Liam shrugs. “Do you think one a week would be reasonable?”

“I could definitely get you a gig a week, if that’s what you’re asking. There was that one thing in the works last month that we kind of let fall by the wayside.” Her brow is gently furrowed, like a worried mum. He supposes that she is a worried mum, sometimes.

He brushes the concern off. “Just realised lately that I’ve been a bit bored, is all. It’ll be nice to get back in the habit of being out late and putting on a show.”

“I’ll make it happen,” Alex says, and that’s that.

—

It’s late on Thursday morning, and Liam’s bored of waiting for Lina to be done with school. He wants to sit down at the piano. He wants to ring Louis up and ask him to come over and write. 

He doesn’t know if he’s allowed to ask for that, or if it was a one-time offer out of desperation. 

After a long moment of staring at his piano, and another long moment of staring at his mobile, Liam unlocks it and types out a short message to Louis. He thinks of how eager Louis was to write with him less than a month ago, and how it felt to work with him pulling words and melodies into something coherent. When he remembers Louis’s grin the night they’d got to do it again, it’s easy to hit send on the message.

_Got anything your working on that you want help with? Ive got an itch to write_

Barely two hours later, Louis is on his sofa, staring at lyrics on his tablet while Liam plays the piano. It’s becoming something of a habit, and he’s a little scared by how easy it is to get used to Louis in his space again. Like they hadn’t spent years and years not doing this, like they’d only stopped for a few weeks to go on a holiday or something.

When Liam had said he was sure they could still fit, he hadn’t really imagined it would be this easy.

He lets his fingers slide through scraps of the tune that Louis has already played for him off his phone, and others that Louis has just barely hummed, trying to see how the pieces work. Those don’t fit quite as easily as he and Louis seem to be, but Liam is enjoying the challenge of it, moving his fingers through the same patterns until Louis calls out a suggestion, and things fall into place a little bit.

It’s a very different style of song than the one they were working on last time, smooth and lyrical instead of poppy and uptempo. Louis said he was thinking about stripped down instrumentation, maybe just guitar or piano in addition to the vocals. The lyrics are a bit sad, but Liam thinks they could be sadder. He plays the same bit again, slowing it down even more, and Louis perks up.

“Oh, I like that,” he says. Liam nods.

“It’s a sad song, might as well lean into it, drag everything out a bit.”

It’s a few hours before they get the song sorted, but they manage it. “I’m going to have to tell them you helped, you did so much,” Louis says. “Gotta get your name on it.”

Liam shrugs. “If it won’t get you in trouble.”

“It won’t,” Louis says, and Liam accepts that. Silence falls, interrupted only by the sounds of their breathing. They’re settled in just a little too close to each other on the sofa, Louis’s tablet tossed on the table. Liam’s a little wrung out, in the way that means he’s put some pieces of himself into the music. Except for how he’s considering whether he should ask Louis to stay for dinner, the whole moment reminds Liam pointedly of the late nights they spent together doing this, eventually collapsing against each other when they were too exhausted to go on.

It’s been so long that Liam’s almost started to doze when Louis speaks. 

“Why’d you stop calling?” His voice is a little rough. He’s been singing to himself a lot the last few hours, murmuring the words and the melodies. 

Liam thinks of how much they spoke in the first few years after the band split up, of all the long phone calls late at night and dragging into the morning. Louis’s voice shaking as he gave Liam updates on his mum, Liam itching to be there and unable to find the words to ask if he would be welcome. Louis laughing delightedly when Liam told him Cheryl was pregnant, demanding first dibs at babysitting. Asking Louis for advice on babies, the quiet but obvious joy when Louis told him he and Eleanor got back together. Once he rang Louis in the middle of the night, desperately hoping he was in LA, and they whispered for hours as Liam paced with Bear cradled against his chest, because he started wailing every time Liam put him down. He doesn’t remember if Louis was in LA, or if he just picked up in the middle of the night because it was Liam.

Louis deserves a better answer than the pathetic _dunno_ that Liam can feel on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn’t know how to put words to the things that happened in his head.

Besides, it’s not like Louis had been trying all that hard back at that point either, but Liam isn’t sure he wants to point that out. This is all so fragile, and he can’t put _why didn’t you come to my wedding?_ out into the air between them, not when Louis is looking this cozy on Liam’s sofa, and Liam wants him to stay for dinner.

He shrugs, slowly. “I don’t have a good answer,” he says finally. “Everything just got out of hand, I was such a mess. And then I didn’t know what to say if I did call, and then it had been so long that I thought it would be odd.” 

Louis makes a quiet noise, a little sad. Liam knows it’s not a good answer, incomplete and pitiful and unsatisfying. “Sorry,” he adds. It doesn’t help much, he doesn’t think.

“Liam,” he says softly, and that’s not an answer to what Liam said. It’s not accepting his apology, or saying that it’s not good enough. It’s the voice Louis used on him when he first got his heart broken, not what he expected to hear now. Getting divorced isn’t like getting your heart broken; Liam knows, he’s done both enough times.

Louis shifts a little closer on the sofa, and he smiles, but it’s sad. “I wish I’d known,” he says. “I wish I could’ve helped.”

Liam wants to say that it would’ve helped if Louis had come to his wedding but they both know it wouldn’t have. No marriage that fell apart within 18 months could’ve been saved by much of anything, and in the end it doesn’t matter all that much who shows up to watch a ceremony. What matters is the people who take the vows, and how seriously they take them. Or don’t take them.

Liam’s not always the sharpest tack but even he knows that nothing could have saved his marriage to Becca. 

“Don’t think anyone could’ve helped,” Liam mutters. He feels a little churlish, but not enough to stop him saying it. Besides, Louis’s seen a lot worse on him than mildly churlish, and he’s still decided that Liam’s worth knowing again all these years later.

“Still,” Louis says. His voice is soft and warm, the way Liam remembers it being when someone has needed a bit of clucking at in the band. He’d always wanted to look after them all, even if it had taken Liam a bit to get used to his version of looking after. “Better when you’ve got someone on your side.”

The thought of Louis being the person on his side makes his stomach turn over, a feeling he hasn’t had in years. Louis doesn’t mean it the way Liam wanted him to, years ago, but he still doesn’t know how to be easy with the idea of it. Of Louis offering these things that Liam wants to mean something they don’t.

Also—Louis didn’t come to his wedding. He could’ve been there and he wasn’t, and Liam’s not going to bring it up right now. He’s not ready to fight about that, to hear Louis’s excuses for it. 

“Do you want to stay for dinner?” Liam asks instead. They’re so close on the sofa now that he can feel the way Louis startles. But then Louis murmurs, “Sure,” and that makes Liam go warm and pleased all over. 

“Lina will be home from school soon,” he says. “You’ll have to entertain yourself while I make sure she does her homework, unless you want to help.”

Louis hums. He sounds contented. “I can help,” he offers. “Or I can watch the telly, or fuck around on the piano. Or something. Have you got any video games?” He laughs before Liam can even interject that Lina will never focus on her homework if there’s video games being played nearby. 

“She’d love to have help from someone who isn’t me,” Liam says. “I think Bear’s prodding her into the phase of thinking her parents aren’t cool.”

Louis tilts his head, narrowing his eyes at Liam. “Have you considered that it might be because you’re not cool?” he asks. “I know, because I’m an expert on being cool, and being a cool dad.”

Liam snorts out a ridiculous laugh. For a while, he’d thought Louis was about the coolest person in the whole world. “Don’t worry,” Louis adds. “I’ll tell her that you’re cool even though you aren’t.”

Liam fixes dinner while Louis shows Lina some of the X-Box games that Bear has refused to teach her. It’s nothing too fancy, but once he’s got some potatoes in the microwave and some water boiling for broccoli, he takes a moment to stand in the doorway and just watch them. Lina’s delighted, even though it’s clear that Louis is helping her with the controls a lot. They’re playing some kind of superhero game; Liam doesn’t keep up with all the games Bear has very well, he just checks they’re nothing too violent. He always feels like such a fogey when he thinks about how different they are from the games he played as lad.

Louis seems to be handling this one well, his hands wrapped around Lina’s on the controller. She’s in his lap—sensible, given the shared controller—and she seems utterly delighted.

“We’re gonna beat all your brother’s high scores, aren’t we?” Louis says, just loud enough for Liam to hear, and Liam has to muffle his laugh. 

The kettle clicks loudly behind him, and Liam ignores it to watch Louis and Lina for a little longer. He’s got time before the potatoes are done, and he needs time to get some toppings out, anyway. He might have some tinned chilli in the cupboard, or they could just put the broccoli on the potatoes with butter and cheese. Maybe he should slice some fruit and veg, there’s probably some in the crisper. 

Lina shouts triumphantly, and Liam’s entirely missed what happened, but Louis offers her a hand to high five and she does it gleefully. “I think you’re about ready to try without help,” Louis says, and Lina is clearly delighted, because she immediately scrambles off Louis’s lap to get another controller—“So you can play too,” she says to Louis—and then settles herself back next to him.

Louis turns around, just briefly, and catches Liam’s eye with a smile.

It’s another one of those moments where Liam can see this other version of his life. The one where he’d been a little more courageous at some point, and the one where this has been the kind of family Louis wanted. It’s so easy to expand the picture this moment builds in his mind to fill his whole life: Louis fixing dinner while Liam deals with Lina and Bear if he’s there, dragging Louis out of bed in the mornings so that he’ll make tea while Liam tries to rouse the kids, curling up on the sofa with Louis every night to write or watch films or put on something stupid on the telly and then immediately get distracted talking to each other anyway. Checking on the kids before they go to bed.

Kissing Louis good night.

Liam realises abruptly that he doesn’t know why Louis’s never had more kids, and it makes him ache a little. He wishes he knew, that they hadn’t fallen apart so much that Liam missed all these huge pieces of his life. Thirty eight’s not that old, Liam supposes. Louis could still have more kids. And it’s clear he adores Freddie, maybe he decided that he was happy with that. He hates now much he doesn’t know.

Shaking himself out of the reverie, he goes to actually put dinner together. There’s nothing sweet, but maybe the rest of it will be filling enough that no one will notice. Or they could all go for ice cream, it’s not very late yet. He doesn’t let himself steal any more glances at Louis and Lina while he gets dinner ready, even though he can hear them whooping and laughing, and it’s hard to think about anything but how easily Louis fits into this part of his life.

Louis even encourages Lina to eat her veg and asks all the perfect questions about what she’s learning in school and her favourite games to play with her friends. She tells him all about her cooking lessons with Niall and the look Louis shoots Liam over her head, half jealous and half proud, makes Liam’s heart clench. 

It would be easy for Louis to make his excuses before Liam has to get Lina ready for bed, or for Liam to hint at it politely, but neither of them does. Louis offers to tidy the kitchen instead, and Liam can hear him puttering around while he supervises Lina brushing her teeth. She’d had a cavity last time she went to the dentist, so she was back on supervised toothbrushing for the time being, even though she whinged dramatically about it, because she’s _eight and three quarters_ now.

Louis is still in the kitchen when Liam is done with Lina’s elaborate bedtime rituals, frowning at the inside of the refrigerator. Liam clears his throat, and Louis jumps. It takes a real effort to keep from laughing at him.

“I was looking for snacks,” Louis says. Liam’s fairly certain he means he was looking for beer.

“Haven’t got any,” Liam says. “Bear eats them all every weekend and I haven’t got new ones.” He hasn’t got any beer either, but he’s going to make Louis ask for it outright. 

Louis groans, and Liam pats his shoulder faux-sympathetically. “You could go back to your own house and eat your own snacks,” Liam says, and he regrets it almost immediately, because Louis might actually leave.

But then Louis shakes his head. “My house hasn’t got your delightful daughter in it, though. Or you, for that matter.”

It’s a lovely thing to say, and Liam’s heart thuds in his chest, but he can read between the lines as well as anyone. His house isn’t empty the way Louis’s is.

“There’s some apples in the crisper, I think,” he offers. “Bear didn’t eat the healthy snacks.”

Louis waves him off, shuffling out of the kitchen towards the living room, where he flops down onto the sofa. He’s taking up nearly all of it, legs stretched across the cushions, but he lifts them when Liam approaches, dropping his legs back down across Liam’s lap.

His ankles are right there, and Liam thinks about curling his hand around one of them. He’s probably still got that ridiculous screw tattoo, the one he’d talked Liam into getting as well. He doesn’t have much else on his ankles, not that Liam can see. Liam doesn’t reach out to touch, but he does have to curl his hand into a fist in his lap to resist. It’s possible that it shouldn’t be a surprise, how easy it is for Louis to have him feeling like a teenager again, but he’s taken aback every time.

“Tell me a story,” Louis says, bossy but clearly a little sleepy as well. Liam suspects Louis is going to end up asleep on his sofa again, unless he just offers Louis one of the spare bedrooms. 

“What kind of story?” he asks. 

Louis dozes off in the middle of a meandering recounting of one of Bear’s childhood misadventures, his mouth curled into a hint of a smile. It’s entirely too long before Liam summons the willpower to wake him and herd him into the bedroom where he’s still got the keyboard set up. Louis is too sleepy to protest, but Liam lies awake for a long time thinking about how easy it would be to just never ask Louis to go home.

—

The announcement gets pulled together more quickly than Alex had expected, and it’s only a few weeks before the first threads of it start getting shared around—a possible One Direction reunion in the works, carefully hinted at by a few key people. Liam reviews all the final language, even though he knows that Alex has a better eye for the nuance of these things than he does. It all feels brisk, compared to the way it’s felt when he’s had Louis dozing on his sofa or been laid around someone’s house pretending to play their music and actually just chatting. 

He tells his mum before there’s anything more than a few hints being shared, and his dad too. She cries, of course, and Liam hides the lump in his throat with a forced cough that immediately sets her fretting about whether he’s sick. As soon as he reassures her he isn’t, she starts asking about the boys. 

“They’re hardly boys anymore, Mum,” Liam says, despairing, and she just tuts at him.

“You know what I mean,” she says, and he does, so he provides the updates he can. He even texts her a picture of Freddie that Louis sent him the last time he was in LA, which seems to please her, except it also sets her off talking about how glad she was that Louis was such a good mate for him. There’s something about how worried she was when the band got put together that he wouldn’t be able to find his footing with a group of boys like that. He’s got no idea what she means by “boys like that” but he kind of thinks it might mean “boys who hugged a lot and pretended to snog each other,” which is a whole entire thing that he does not even know where to start with. Maybe it would be easier if he hadn’t emerged on the other side of the cuddly boy band experience with an interest in snogging boys, but he did, and some things are just easier to not get into unless it’s necessary.

It hasn’t been necessary yet, and he’s not exactly young, so maybe it won’t ever be necessary.

He tells Nicola too, and Ruth again, now that it’s official. They ask all the pointed questions Mum and Dad hadn’t about how he’s doing with it. He mostly hadn’t told them about the worst times he had in the band, but he thinks they figured it out somehow, because the questions are specific in ways he hadn’t anticipated, even the ones that aren’t about Louis. 

The first formal rehearsal and planning meeting after the hints start getting dropped is a scene. Liam gets a driver to the studio, because he was warned, and he still somehow wasn’t prepared for the wall of photographers. He’s sure they were tipped off, and he’s sure he agreed to it or at least gave Alex the authority to agree to it, but mostly he’s just completely caught off guard by the intensity of it.

This is for real, then.

He’s lived most of his life since he was in the band, and the whole experience was so surreal that sometimes it’s hard to reconcile with how he lives now, except for the truly stupid amount of money he’s got. But it was a real part of his life, and it’s still a big deal. There’s a part of him that always thought it would fade, that they were just a flash in the pan and other things would show up to take their place, and in a way it’s touching that they truly made such an impression as such a bunch of boys fumbling their way through learning to be professional musicians.

But in another way, there’s about a thousand people trying to take his picture right now, and he doesn’t remember if he brushed his teeth before or after he ate breakfast, so he’s just left to scramble past them and hope there’s nothing visibly in his teeth and that his trousers don’t fall down or anything.

Inside, he learns that he’s beat everyone but Harry getting here. He’s surprised that more of the paps didn’t clear out once they saw Harry, to be honest. But then, maybe they’re waiting in hopes they’ll all leave together. That’s the real money shot, Liam supposes.

Harry’s playing the piano when Liam comes in, a tune Liam doesn’t recognise, and he jumps about a foot in the air when Liam knocks lightly on the wall. “Sorry,” Liam murmurs, and Harry shakes his head.

“Don’t worry about it. I didn’t need to let myself get so caught up.”

Liam feels himself smiling. “It was nice,” he says. “I wouldn’t’ve interrupted except I didn’t want you to not know someone was listening.” Harry was always a little cagey about his music in the early stages, and Liam doesn’t know all of his songs by heart, or every song in the world, but it hadn’t been familiar.

“Thanks,” Harry says, with this soft little smile that Liam remembers so well. They’d babied Harry—and Niall—a good bit in the early days, and Liam can so clearly see the pleased look Harry got when he knew someone was looking after him. He doesn’t turn back to the piano now, even though Liam said he liked the music, so Liam thinks he may have been right.

“Working on something?” he asks, picking a chair just so he’s not looming in the doorway. 

“A bit,” Harry says. “It’s not really anything yet, just—an idea.”

Liam hums, careful acknowledgment of it. “I know how that feels.” Harry cocks an eyebrow at him, but doesn’t say anything. “You can keep playing if you want,” Liam adds. “I won’t tell. But it’s fine if you don’t want to, you don’t have to.”

The way Harry laughs, the one that teeters right on the edge of mocking but feels like when his sisters tease him instead of something mean, that’s as familiar as Harry’s smile at being looked after. “I don’t know,” he says, and Liam can hear him waffling.

He doesn’t want to push, not the way he would’ve in the band, but he did like the music. “It’s alright,” he says, just a little sad. “It was really pretty, though.”

“Yeah?” Harry asks, and Liam nods.

“Yeah. I’d like to hear it when it’s done, if you don’t mind.”

Harry smiles again. “Thanks,” he says. He isn’t saying outright that he’ll do it, but somehow it feels like he is. “I can play you something else instead?”

“Please,” Liam says, and that’s how Niall and Louis find them, with Harry trying his best to pick out the melody of one of the songs off Niall’s newest album, Liam singing along in fits and starts. They’re both laughing about it, and Liam doesn’t realise they have an audience until he hears applause behind him and turns to see Louis and Niall standing there, also laughing. 

Niall gestures for them to continue. “No no,” he says. “I want to hear what you’re going to do to my music.”

Harry manages another few bars, though Liam’s singing gets progressively worse as he laughs harder and starts forgetting the words. Starting the session off with everyone laughing feels good. They had fun with these, before. Sure, everyone complained that they were unruly, but they had a laugh. And they pulled it together in the end, anyway. Usually.

They need to have a conversation about a setlist before they get too deep into rehearsing. Liam raises the topic, a little tentatively after the row last time, but nothing blows up. He’d thought they might want to all come up with their own lists and compare, but instead, for some reason, everyone wants to sit around a table and go through all their songs and decide on whether they’re a yes, a maybe, or a no.

It sounds like it’s going to lead to a thousand completely ridiculous arguments, and like it’s going to take forever, and Liam actually doesn’t hate it. He kind of wants the ridiculous arguments, misses them the way he misses hassling Lina about bedtime when she goes to stay at her mum’s for a few weeks in the summer. At least this time they’d told the people who are meant to be making sure they all know how to sing to come a little later today, so they have some time for this.

It goes better than Liam feared. There’s a few scuffles, but no all-out rows. He’s resigned to having a few favourites left off, but everyone else seems to be as well, and no one’s being a wanker about it. Louis takes notes on his mobile, promising to send them around once they’ve got a rough draft. 

What there’s more of than Liam anticipated, even after revisiting a good number of songs from the charity gig, is how much time they spend enjoying the snippets of music Niall plays off his phone. The setlist Louis’d made for the Wembley show leaned heavily on singles and the things they’d always performed, all their staples, and Liam’s taken aback by how many of the album tracks he wishes they could’ve mixed in.

Harry and Niall are deep into a debate about the merits of Better Than Words and Why Don’t We Go There when Liam makes a suggestion, and he can feel them slowly emerging from their discussion to process it. 

“It’s not a bad idea,” Harry says. “If we’re not doing quite such a cramped schedule and not trying to write an album between the shows, we could definitely have more variation in the setlist.”

Nods all around for that, and Liam’s pleased. They’re going to have to relearn a lot, and they never did most of the last album live anyway, so it’s as good a time as any to tackle some of the other tracks. He likes the idea of having kind of a blank slate to pick the songs they like best and want to perform most. It won’t really be, of course, they’ll still have to do almost all the singles, and there’s about a thousand other people who are going to have opinions on this. 

Like he’s reading Liam’s mind, Harry grins, looking a little mischievous. “Are there any singles anyone really doesn’t want to do?” He pauses, and then clarifies. “Er, of the ones we did at the charity thing, anyway. The ones everyone’s going to expect.”

Niall chuckles. “It’s a bit hard to sell a song about enjoying your youth when you’re thirty six and worried about throwing your back out on stage.”

“Some of us had to worry about that when we were young,” Harry mutters, and the rest of them all laugh. 

Liam tilts his head, thinking. He makes sure his expression is perfectly serious and thoughtful when he says, “What if we dropped What Makes You Beautiful?” He can feel everyone staring at him for a moment that lingers, trying to pick out if he’s serious, and then Louis squawks with laughter.

“We should suggest it just to see people’s faces,” he says. Harry looks wary, the way he did when he was worried about getting yelled at, and Niall is just laughing and laughing and laughing. 

“Think that one might not go over well, Liam,” he says once he’s caught his breath. 

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Louis says, gleeful. “Scare ‘em all a bit, that we’ve completely lost it. We could say we want to do a fully acoustic tour.”

He’s joking, of course, but Liam could see the appeal of that, just the four of them sat around on stage with guitars and a piano, singing like they’re at a tiny venue even if they’re not. 

“Well,” Niall says, and Liam knows, impossibly, that they’re having the same thoughts. “It wouldn’t be so bad for a few songs, at least.”

Harry looks thoughtful, and even Louis has stopped laughing. “It could be nice,” Harry says. “I don’t want to pretend that nothing’s changed.” He’s speaking slowly, even for himself, and Liam waits patiently as he chooses his words carefully. “I know a reunion tour’s all about nostalgia, but pretending that we just picked up right where we left off when we took the break seems weird to me.”

“We’ve all done a lot since then,” Liam says. He’s got another idea, and he thinks it’s a good one, but he also thinks he needs to be delicate about it. It hasn’t been long since he mucked things up a bit helping Louis with the arranging, and he doesn’t think he’s done enough to make up for it, especially since he got off easy in terms of getting yelled at in the moment.

But Niall and Louis are already off to the races, talking about which songs it would be fun to try a stripped version of, and Liam is spared for a few minutes at least. He even jumps in a few times, as does Harry, and at the end of it they’ve mostly got a list for that bit, in addition to the beginnings of a proposed setlist. It feels good, actually.

Liam’s spent so much of this process scared out of his mind or up to his eyeballs in nostalgia that hurts, just a little, that it’s a bit of a surprise when something just goes well and feels right and he’s excited to do more of it. He can feel Louis’s eyes lingering on him all through the discussion, and he doesn’t know what to make of it.

It makes his skin tingle. 

“What are you thinking about, Liam?” Louis asks, soft and right into Liam’s ear, when he’s been quiet for too long. Liam thinks about how, once, him being quiet for long periods of time was normal, and how somehow being with these people trained him to never shut up instead. He thinks about the way Louis always, always listened when Liam said things about their music, even when he didn’t listen to anything else Liam said. He thinks about how he learned, eventually, slowly, that that was as much because Louis was terrified of someone deciding he wasn’t any good, actually.

He thinks about all the things Louis has done since then, the songs he wrote for them and the songs he wrote for himself and the performances he’s given. The way Louis’s voice rasps comfortingly when he sings softly over the piano to himself, and when he sings into a microphone in front of a crowd. 

“I had an idea,” Liam says.

Louis scoots closer to him, tucks his head right against Liam’s so Liam can whisper easily. They’ve been this close a few times since this reunion affair started, but, aside from the one hug on stage, not in front of anyone else. Liam feels like Harry and Niall’s eyes are boring into them, even though he can hear that they’re still having their down quiet discussion. Louis’s skin is warm, and his breath against Liam’s skin feels conspicuously intimate.

“Come on,” Louis urges. “What’s the idea?”

Liam swallows hard. “I’m afraid Harry and Niall might be upset, if I don’t say it right, but what if we put some of everyone’s solo songs into the setlist? We could have everyone else do backup, or play, or something like that. It would be—you know, just not pretending that we haven’t done anything with our lives since the band.”

He can hear the way Louis sucks in a sharp breath. “Oh, I like that,” he whispers. “It’ll be complicated, though,” he adds, and Liam nods. Their heads nearly bump when he does it, and he can feel Louis’s hair against his cheek.

“We can get other people to sort most of the complicated bits out,” he points out. “We can just fix up the songs to be the way we want them to.”

“True,” Louis says, and then he presses a quick kiss to Liam’s temple. Liam’s pretty sure he can actually feel his pulse speeding up. He manages to keep from sucking in a quick breath or anything that obvious. He hadn’t thought to expect what it would be like with Louis, this time. “You should suggest it.”

He still can’t say no to Louis, not like that. Not when Louis’s voice is warm in his ear and his body is pressed up against Liam’s and it’s so easy to imagine things he thought he’d put behind him years ago. He startles when Harry and Niall turn away from their conversation, and he jerks away from Louis even though that’s probably more suspicious than them being curled together. Even though there’s nothing to be suspicious of except Liam’s churning thoughts, and no one was ever able to guess those before, not even when he was doing a lot worse than sitting so close to Louis that he could feel the warmth of his skin.

“You two ready to actually play some music?” Niall asks, which gives no indication at all what he and Harry were conspiring about. Liam’s too distracted to worry about it.

“Sure,” Liam says, and his voice doesn’t crack. 

“Don’t chicken out,” Louis whispers to Liam as they rearrange themselves to actually be able to sing, and Liam tries not to shiver.

“I won’t,” he says.

It’s not the only thing he needs to say, but it’s certainly the easier one.

—

It takes Liam screwing up his courage for a moment to send a text to the group chat about the DJ gig Alex lines up for him the following week, even though he’s not the only one who’s been sending things. They all have, just small updates and pictures and occasional bits of their lives. It’s not a lot, but it’s also more than nothing. He knew some things, because he’s not living under a rock, but there’s a difference between knowing that Harry has a nephew because he lives in the world and seeing a picture of the boy with his arms around an absolutely enormous plushie, Gemma nearly doubled over with laughter in the background.

So he sends the message, just a brief invitation with the details of the time and place and then _Id love it if any of you came_. He doesn’t let himself have any expectations, even as he tells Alex and Glenn that he invited them. Things are loads more intense now that people know about the reunion for real, and if the lads actually show up at his gig, it’ll be a scene. It’s not enough to stop him sending the invitation, but he isn’t an idiot, at least not all the time.

The gig’s on a Saturday, and after some debate it’s settled that Bear is allowed to come if he does all of his schoolwork beforehand. The babysitter still has to come to watch Lina, and Liam does have to devote a chunk of his afternoon to checking Bear’s work against the assignments in his diary, but he gets through it all in the end. 

He’d got a round of _sounds so great_ messages in the group chat after he sent the invitation, but he’s not actually sure how many of them will show. Still, he texts a quick update that Bear is coming, and where he’ll be watching from (under Alex’s watchful eye, after she offered). They’d had to swear to the club that he would leave as soon as Liam’s set is done, but Liam’s not planning to stay past then anyway. Besides, he’ll be able to see Bear from where he’s standing, so he won’t be able to get up to anything. 

In the end, all three of them put in appearances, but whether it’s by accident or design, the only overlap is a couple of songs. It feels almost perfectly planned, but it also feels like it could have been entirely by accident—Harry comes first, and only stays for a few songs before he whispers something to Alex. At the end of the night, when Liam checks his messages, he’s got a message from Harry about having another event to get to.

Then it’s Niall, and by then Liam’s so caught up in the music that he’s not paying much attention. But Niall sends him a string of messages to the tune of _great job mate!!!_ and that’s plenty. He and Louis overlap briefly, chatting away where Liam can just barely see them out of the corner of his eye, and then Niall leaves.

And Louis stays.

Liam picked an early-ish window for the gig, but DJ gigs at clubs on the weekend only start so early, and by the end of it he can see that Bear is fading. Alex has rubbed her eyes a few times as well, if her smudged makeup is anything to go by. Bear is listing toward her, and he yawns dramatically as Liam ends his set and makes his way toward them.

Louis is the first one to pounce on him, probably because he’s the most energetic of the group. Maybe he’s still on LA time or something, Liam thinks as he’s swallowed up in a hug, Louis gushing in his ear about how great it was. 

“I feel like I could run through a wall!” Louis is saying, a little rough, “Or maybe like I could stay up all night partying.”

Pushing him away slightly, Liam frowns. “I don’t think you could, though,” he says.

“Shut up,” Louis mutters. “We’re not so old.”

“We are,” Liam says. “Let me go talk to my son.”

Louis just laughs as Liam pushes past to him, the kind of laugh that means he’s not taking Liam seriously at all. It means he knows exactly how much Liam likes him, and exactly how much Liam is willing to do for him.

Hugging Bear and then Alex is easy, as is settling an arm around Bear’s shoulders while he squirms and looks embarrassed. Less easy is reminding himself that he’s not still absolutely stupid for Louis, that he’s a grown adult with two ex-wives and two kids and that he doesn’t need to be pining after his former bandmate. 

Louis has followed him back to Bear and Alex, and curls his arm around Bear’s waist. “Come here, sleepyhead,” he says, and Bear mumbles a halfhearted protest. “I’ll save you from having to be seen with your embarrassing dad.”

Bear goes when Louis tugs on him, because he gets pliable when he’s sleepy. He stumbles as he goes, and Alex clears her throat.

“The deal with the venue was that he’s got to go as soon as Liam is done,” she says. “I can take him back to yours if you want to stay, Liam. If the sitter can’t stay later, I can.” 

There’s a look on her face Liam’s not sure he’s ever seen before, and he doesn’t think he wants to try and pull apart what it means tonight either. She knows, now. Not what he felt for Louis, necessarily, but she’s clever. She might’ve already guessed, or maybe she’s just wondering. 

Liam should say no, because he needs to get home to his kids and he shouldn’t ask Alex to go to the trouble of staying the night. Instead he says, “Lou?” and turns to catch Louis’s eye. 

Louis shrugs. “I haven’t got anywhere to be tomorrow, I could relive my youth for one night.”

“If there’s pictures of the two of you spilling out of a club at the crack of dawn it’ll be all over every gossip site by 7 tomorrow morning,” Alex says mildly. “I’m not saying don’t do it, but just know that’ll be coming down the line for you.”

Liam grins. “I can handle that.” He pauses for a moment. “I can, right?”

“You’ll be fine.” Alex knocks her shoulder against his. “There’ll be some terrible play on words with the name of one of your songs, though.”

Louis chuckles. He’s clearly had a few drinks, all loose and slightly flushed. “My money’s on Live While We’re Young or Midnight Memories but I suppose they might actually get creative for once.”

Bear wobbles dangerously, and Liam’s pretty sure it’s only Louis’s arm around his back that’s keeping him upright. “Alright, let’s do it,” he says. “It’s fine if Bear sleeps on the sofa, don’t feel like you need to drag his comatose body all the way to his bedroom,” he says to Alex, and she laughs. 

“I’ll do my best,” she says, and then she kisses him on the cheek and extracts Bear from where he’s nearly asleep against Louis’s shoulder. 

Liam feels like he’s been left adrift, music thudding around him and Louis standing a little too close, stepping closer before Liam realises he’s doing it.

“You didn’t say anything at the rehearsal,” Louis mumbles. He’s slurring a little, drunk or tired or maybe both. “About the solo songs. You chickened out.”

Liam winds an arm around his back, mostly so that Louis won’t weave away from him and start speaking more loudly. “I will,” he says, insistent. “There wasn’t a good moment, is all.”

The way Louis hums sounds distinctly skeptical, which Liam is fairly certainly he doesn’t deserve. There really wasn’t a good moment, and they’re still hashing out the details of the setlist. He can bring it up next time, or in the group chat, or—something. It’s not like it was his only opportunity.

Besides, the way Louis is pressed up against him feels a lot more urgent. He’s warm and soft around the edges and smells faintly of alcohol, and it reminds Liam so clearly of being in the band, of being twenty and on the other side of the world and drunk off his arse. Except he’s none of those things, and Louis is here. Still. Or maybe again.

“Do you want to dance?” Louis asks, grinning at Liam the way he used to when he had some mad scheme that was sure to land them both in trouble. Liam tries to find it within him to say no, but the will just isn’t there. He does want to dance with Louis, pressed up against him in the half-dark of the club, the music surrounding and disguising them. He doesn’t know if Louis wants it for the reasons Liam did, years ago, or if he just wants a good time, but Liam’s not going to waste this moment trying to find out.

Louis still makes him want to be reckless. 

“I’d like that,” Liam says, and he smiles, because it’s Louis. Sure, it’s Louis drunk and a little wobbly on his feet, but he came to Liam’s gig tonight, and he wants to dance, and those are the important bits.

Liam doesn’t exactly feel young again, dancing at a club with Louis maybe a little closer than mates ought to if they don’t want anyone else to think they’re a couple, but he feels something close to it. A nostalgia that goes all the way down to his bones. They’re not good dancers, either of them, but it’s easy to move with Louis more or less in time with the music. Louis’s movements are more fluid, on account of how he’s had several drinks and Liam’s had none, but the whole situation is so heady that Liam doesn’t feel even the slightest inclination to catch up.

They’re a little too close together to just be mates, but that was always how they were—at times like these and for their whole lives, really. Just a little too close.

When he was a kid, it was when they’d go out that Liam would let himself be a little reckless with his heart and imagine things he knew he’d never get. Louis taking another half step closer so that their hips were almost pressed together. Louis letting his hands fall onto Liam’s hips to hold them there. Louis curling his arms around Liam’s neck and dragging him down into a kiss right there in the middle of the crowded dance floor. 

In the present, Louis is grinning at him, and swirling his hips in an exaggerated way that makes Liam both want to laugh and want to swallow his own tongue. He’s not half in love with Louis anymore, but he never stopped thinking Louis was fit. How could he, when Louis is still—himself. His thighs still curve more than Liam’s, and his shoulders are broader than they were, like he’s spent plenty of time in the gym. His hair’s a bit longer than on the version of Louis that Liam pictures automatically in his memory, but it’s familiarly floppy. There’s faint lines around his eyes and mouth that Liam hasn’t fully incorporated into his mental image yet, but he likes them. It’s all just Louis.

“Come _on_ ,” Louis says, and then his hands are settling on Liam’s hips, moving them for him. “You said you were going to dance with me.”

It’s been a long time since they did this, years and years and more of his life than Liam can bear to think about right now, but he doesn’t think they used to talk about it as dancing _together_. Right now they definitely are, though. Liam’s moving in time with Louis, as best he can, and Louis’s edged just a little closer. It’s not like they’re grinding up on each other, but they’re not paying attention to anyone else, either. It feels different.

Liam doesn’t want to dwell on it. Instead, he lets himself get caught up in the music, and in Louis’s company.

—

The next time Liam sees the whole band, they’re over at Harry’s for what Harry has promised will be a homemade dinner. It would be easier if they met at someone else’s house, given how much more likely there are to be paps lurking around Harry’s, but he seems to like having people over, and Liam hadn’t felt it’s worth picking a fight over.

This time, Louis is the one who lets him in. He and Niall are settled in the living room already, and Liam goes into the kitchen to say hello to Harry instead of waiting for him to emerge. He has to wait a moment to get Harry’s attention, since he doesn’t want to interrupt him while he’s got his hands in the oven, and then Harry, clearly somewhat distracted, starts rambling about wine pairings. It’s all a bit over Liam’s head, even if he has learned to appreciate a nice glass of wine in a way he never believed he would until it happened, but he nods and hums in the right places.

At another time, he probably would’ve interrupted Harry and teased him for being posh until his ears went pink, but it’s not another time. It’s a bit silly to tease Harry for liking wine when they’ve all got more money than they could ever possibly know what to do with.

“Whatever you think is good,” Liam says instead, when he gets the chance. “I think you know better than me.” He thinks about adding that he doesn’t drink much these days, but it might seem like a rejection of what Harry’s offering, and that’s not what he wants.

Harry’s smile is soft, though. “If you’re sure,” he says. “I don’t want to serve you something you won’t like, especially if you’re only going to have one glass.”

Liam flushes, just slightly embarrassed that Harry noticed. He doesn’t want it to be something people notice.

“Hey,” Harry says, “It’s good, yeah? That you pay attention to that stuff. I like it when people I like take care of themselves.”

Liam’s in the process of coming up with a response when he hears raised voices from the living room. Harry, who’d just taken two steps toward the living room, freezes. He glances at Liam, wary, and then confused. It’s odd, because Niall having a row with anyone is odd. Liam can count on his fingers the number of times he can remember Niall truly getting angry with any of them. The rest of them had all screamed at each other plenty, about important and unimportant things alike, but not Niall.

Niall saved his fights up and only used them when it really mattered.

When he would talk about the band often in interviews, Liam’d always talked about his fights with Louis as something that ended when they sorted themselves out and became mates, but—they all fought. It’s impossible to live like that and not fight. Even when he’d have thrown himself on a fire for Louis, they’d have the most hideous screaming matches from time to time, long bouts of yelling Liam would emerge from feeling like he’d just run ten miles, exhausted and out of breath. They’d go to bed still furious, and then in the morning it wouldn’t feel like it was a big deal at all anymore, and one of them would bring the other breakfast, or suggest some ridiculous outing, and it was all fine after that.

Harry and Louis would shout at each other plenty too, and even Harry and Liam from time to time. 

Liam can’t ever remember Niall and Louis screaming like this. They usually kept their tempers under control around each other, or maybe they just kept the fights secret.

Even from the next room, Liam can barely make out what Niall and Louis are saying; it’s clear they’re trying to keep the fight to themselves and are aware that Harry and Liam are close by. Harry gestures to the cheese board that’s resting on the kitchen island and says, “How about we stay in here for a few minutes?”

“Please,” Liam says. There’s a couple of bar chairs by the island, because Harry’s kitchen is extremely American, and they sit down, almost brushing elbows.

From the other room, Liam clearly hears Louis say, “I don’t like what you’re implying!” but Niall’s response is inaudible. 

“I feel like we shouldn’t be eavesdropping,” Liam says. Harry shakes his head, looking helpless.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard them like this,” he says, and then he fixes himself a cracker with cheese. Somehow, that’s the thing that sets Liam off laughing. Louis and Niall screaming at each other in the other room while Harry fixes himself cheese on crackers. The cheese looks nice. If Liam weren’t about to go into utter hysterics he’d fix himself one, too.

“Sorry, I care too much about this band to let it be your midlife crisis project,” Niall shouts in the other room. Harry takes a bite of his cracker, and then sets it down on the counter, putting his head in his hands.

After a long moment, during which Liam can hear Louis hissing something, clearly furious, but can’t make out a single word, Harry sits back up. “Can’t say I expected Niall to be the one to say it first,” Harry says, and he’s laughing too, disbelieving.

“Not really,” Liam says. “But then, was either of us going to?”

Harry snorts. “Would’ve had to ring Zayn to come back and make him do it. He was always willing to give Louis what for.” He sounds wistful. Liam’s been wistful a lot, these days. It’s hard not to, getting the gang back together and all that.

Still, he’s been surprised again and again to discover just how much of this he missed. After, it had been so easy to let himself believe that it was all just an illusion from the forced closeness, that none of them ever really fit together, but here, now, even with Niall and Louis still going at it, he’s questioning it. 

He can hear Niall yelling again, even if he can only make out half the words. Niall thinks Louis’s been a bad friend, Liam’s pretty sure, and something else as well, something that makes Louis say, “Oh _fuck_ you.” That, Liam can hear perfectly clearly.

“Why’d we stop?” Liam asks Harry, softly. “You and me, being mates, I mean.” A lot of the things that have fallen apart have been his fault, but this one—he doesn’t think it’s all on him. Harry’s face is somewhere between serious and sad, his brow just slightly furrowed. 

“I guess I thought you’d taken Louis’s side,” he says, slowly and deliberately. He takes a large swig from his wine after he says it, and his face makes Liam’s heart hurt.

“Taken Louis’s side in what?” he asks.

Harry shrugs one shoulder, and Liam kind of hates how easily he can see that this is hurting him. “Did he not tell you? I assumed he had and that was why you didn’t try very hard to keep in touch.” He pauses, eats a large piece of the crumbly cheddar that’s on the platter. “We had a massive row not long before we decided to do the break. Biggest we ever had.”

Liam had no idea, and he says as much. Harry looks—well, he’s got the same exhausted look that Liam remembers from before the break, when he started being hard to ever get in touch with him outside of official working hours.

“It was the same thing we always rowed about it, he had an idea for something that might finally convince people we weren’t secretly in love and trying to tell the world about it, and I didn’t think it would work and didn’t want to spend my whole life trying to convince people of something they were never going to believe anyway.”

“He was always looking for ways to control it,” Liam says, his voice soft. Talking about it still makes his stomach hurt.

“I know.” Harry’s voice has gone rough, like he might cry. He runs a hand through his hair, leaving it mussed instead of carefully disheveled. “I don’t think he wanted to believe it couldn’t be controlled, but there wasn’t anything we could have done to stop it at that point. I think by the time we realised it was a problem it was already beyond stopping.”

Liam nods, but Harry looks like he’s going to keep talking, so he doesn’t butt in.

“He would come up with these schemes, about how if we just did even more, maybe they would finally believe us and let it go, and for a while I went along with it but I just felt like they were all pushing me farther and farther away from the rest of you and, well, like I said. We had a massive row about it.”

“Harry,” Liam says softly. He wants to put his hand on Harry’s arm, or curl an arm around his shoulders. 

In the other room, Louis and Niall’s voices are audible once again, but controlled enough that none of it’s comprehensible. Maybe that’s a good sign. 

“I probably would’ve taken his side,” Liam says. He feels bad about it, now, but he knows that he was too blinded by affection at the time to have seen the full picture. “I always felt like he needed someone in his corner. He spent so much time looking out for the rest of us, you know.”

Harry rests his chin on his hand. “He did.” 

Somehow, sat here in Harry’s kitchen, the lights around them almost glaringly bright, it’s easy to say. “Well that, and I quite fancied him.”

The words are out of his mouth before he’s realised he’s going to say it, so he doesn’t have time to anticipate Harry’s response, but he would never have thought to expect the way Harry snorts, light and fond. “We all did a bit, didn’t we? He was a very easy person to fancy.”

Liam takes a deep breath. He could let it lie, pretend he was just talking about the way they were all more than a little obsessed with each other.

“No,” he says softly. “This was—you know—”

Harry says his name on a sigh. “For real, then?” he asks, and when Liam nods, he sits up and extends one arm to curl around Liam’s shoulders. Liam crumples against him a bit, tucking his face into the curve of Harry’s neck in a way he hasn’t in years and years and years. Harry’s hair is longer than it was when they did the charity show, curling down around his chin and tickling Liam’s ear, and he presses a kiss to the side of Liam’s head. “That’s different then, yeah?” he murmurs.

Liam sighs and drags himself out of Harry’s embrace. “Not like I was going to do anything about it. Don’t even know if he’s ever thought about lads, to be honest.”

The laugh he gets from Harry in response is even rougher, and just a little sad. “I wondered a few times, early on. X-Factor days.”

Liam remembers what the two of them were like. He’d wondered, too. Him and half the world. “But by the time I actually knew him well enough to feel like I could ask, the conspiracy madness had started and it seemed like it was best to just leave it alone. Don’t even know if he’d have told me the truth at that point.”

“God,” Liam says. “They really did a fucking number on us, didn’t they.” 

Harry takes another drink from his wine, which is nearly empty at this point. Liam’s barely touched his, but he takes what could best be called a gulp of it now. Harry chuckles, low and warm.

“I haven’t heard any screaming in a few minutes,” Harry points out. “Shall we go check and make sure there’s no corpses in my house?”

“I also didn’t hear a door slam,” Liam says. “Who knows what’s happened in your living room.”

Harry tops up both their glasses, just a splash into Liam’s and a generous glug into his own. He balances the cheese board carefully in his other hand. “Come on, then,” he says. “Worst thing we’ll find is that they’ve offed each other and then we’ll have a whole inquest, it’ll be a massive scandal.”

Liam laughs, helpless. He’s fairly certain that’s not what they’ll find, and he’s right. Louis and Niall are both on the sofa, sitting at opposite ends but Louis’s feet are stretched across the length of it, his toes resting against Niall’s thigh. He has the grace to look sheepish when he sees Harry and Liam.

“Oh, were you hiding?” he asks. “Sorry.”

Harry sets the cheese down on the coffee table and then settles himself onto the other sofa, carefully leaving room for Liam next to him. “You can both get your own wine as punishment,” he says.

Louis scowls. “Was getting screamed at not punishment enough?”

Niall rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t look angry anymore, just—fond and exasperated. “That was the punishment for being a prick. I assume getting our own wine is punishment for having it out at Harry’s dinner party.” Harry raises his glass to Niall. “We’re finished now,” Niall adds, and Louis nods.

“Good,” Harry mutters. “Liam’s lovely company but I didn’t have you all over to spend the evening hiding in my own kitchen eating all the hors d'oeuvres myself.”

Liam pokes him in the leg. “I helped!”

“Liam did help,” Harry allows. 

The tension doesn’t evaporate completely after that, but it eases enough to have a comfortable evening. Liam doesn’t spend the whole night absolutely fixated on whether Harry is watching the way he acts with Louis, though he catches himself thinking about it more than once. There is indeed the homemade dinner that Harry promised, which they eat in Harry’s dining room instead of outdoors. Louis only kicks Liam under the table three or four times during silences that linger just long enough that Liam could have, theoretically, given the subject a sharp yank towards planning their upcoming tour.

It doesn’t feel quite right, not when things are still fragile after the fight earlier. Liam is going to wait until it feels natural.

Luckily for him, and for the number of bruises he’s going to have on his shins tomorrow, as they’re working their way through dessert the conversation turns to their current projects aside from the tour. Niall’s finishing up his work for the movie single, which Liam has heard on the radio a few times. He doesn’t think it sounds much like Niall, actually, but that seems like a mean thing to say. Meanwhile, Harry’s been kicking a few ideas around but none of them have got very far. Louis smiles a bit awkwardly during it all, and Liam’s just—waiting for his opportunity.

It comes soon enough, a natural pause into which he can clear his throat and then say, “While we’re on the topic of our music, I had an idea for the tour.”

Louis perks up immediately, and Harry and Niall look intrigued.

“We’ve all got plenty of stuff we did solo, and there’s no point in pretending it hasn’t been fifteen years, we covered that already, so I thought it might be nice if we included some of each of our songs.” He pauses, fiddles with his napkin for a moment. “Everyone else could do backup vocals or something, whatever we decide we’re comfortable with and sounds good.” There’s no immediate response from anyone, and Liam feels obliged to add, “I just thought it would be nice.”

Niall’s contemplative expression fades into a smile. “It _is_ nice,” he says. 

“It is,” Harry agrees. His smile is softer, but his eyes are warm.

Directly across from Liam, Louis is grinning the widest. “It’s symbolic,” he says, gesturing expansively. “Like—we all still support each other, or some such.”

“Don’t we?” Harry says, his smile going broader. Liam can see his dimples. “I mean I suppose Liam did say that one time that he didn’t like my songs—”

Liam groans. “Do you know how much shit I got for that?” Harry’s just grinning at him, clearly enjoying himself. “Silly of me to assume that anyone might understand the difference between not liking something and thinking it’s bad.”

“Wow,” Niall says, deadpan. “You sounded like a complete wanker when you said that.”

“He’s right,” Louis says. Liam just groans again. 

“We can let him off the hook,” Harry says. “As long as he promises he’s okay with performing some music he doesn’t like.”

Liam knows he’s gone pink, and what’s more, that his embarrassment is going to be clear from his eyes. “I suggested it, didn’t I?” He softens his tone before he adds, “I’d be honoured to help any of you perform your songs.”

Louis coos loudly at that, in the way he has that means he’s pretending not to be touched by something that he actually thought was sweet. Liam’s stomach turns over, a churning feeling so familiar that for a moment he would be willing to swear that it was 2014 again. He has to take several slow breaths to steady himself in the present, at Harry’s dining table. He’ll be going home tonight to his house where both of his children will be asleep. At least the conversation moves on rapidly, everyone caught up in more setlist suggestions. It leaves Liam a few minutes to compose himself, feeling the relief that it went over well.

When they all leave that night, they all exchange good night hugs, arms looping gently around each other’s backs and necks. It feels right, like the pieces are starting to fit back together. 

Louis hugs Liam last, and lingers the longest. He tucks his face up into Liam’s shoulder for a moment, and Liam can feel him breathing there, and he doesn’t want to let go. “Glad you finally got the nerve to tell everyone,” Louis whispers before he steps back. “I like your ideas.”

—

Liam is disoriented when he wakes the next morning, light only just beginning to seep into his bedroom around the curtains. It takes him a long moment to realise that Lina has crawled into the bed next to him, a stuffed rabbit clutched in her small hand. He hasn’t seen the rabbit in a while, and it means she wants to be babied, so of course he lets her snuggle up against his side. She’s probably getting too big to keep doing this, but it’s hard to say no when she’s upset, and besides, he’s not ready for her to grow up.

“Is something wrong?” he asks, and her voice is tearful when she says, “I had a bad dream.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?” he murmurs, and she just shakes her head. She’s clearly still sleepy, and he’s absolutely going to let her stay here for the rest of the night, such as it is. He might even be able to get a few more winks himself.

He’s not used to sharing his bed with anyone, these days, and falling asleep with a warm body pressed against his, steady breathing seemingly loud in the quiet room, is harder than he remembers it being. He used to be able to fall asleep just about anywhere, no matter how much noise there was around him, but then—that was something he learned. It had taken a lot of practice and a level of exhaustion he’s glad to say is a distant memory now. He’s not sure he ever got that tired even when Bear or Lina were babies. 

And for all that, it’s not long before he dozes off again.

Maybe it’s the sense memory of sleeping with the sound of someone else’s breath nearby, or maybe it’s just all the conversations he had yesterday, but he dreams about the band. It’s not a memory, the way his dreams of them often are. It’s a twisted thing, pieces of memory looped around each other in nonsensical ways, things that never happened butting up against things Liam’s certain did.

He’s writing with Louis in the dream, curled together on a hotel sofa, and that feels real enough, until he realises that Harry’s lying on the bed and he’s just staring at them. Not saying anything, not adding anything. Just staring. Liam’s suddenly hyper-aware of every place he’s touching Louis, of where the bare skin of Louis’s foot is resting against the bare skin of Liam’s leg. Harry just keeps staring. 

It’s not until Zayn appears in the room—just appears, Liam turns his head and Zayn is there, like he always had been—that Liam realises it’s a dream. That doesn’t stop dream Zayn from yelling at him about keeping secrets, even though Liam protests that he hasn’t been, he doesn’t have any secrets from them. But Louis’s hand is on his leg, creeping up his thigh, and suddenly Liam thinks that maybe he has been, that maybe Louis is going to kiss him right here and then the secret will be out. 

He wakes for a second time with a jolt, even more disoriented than he was the first time and confused by where Niall was. Everyone else was there.

Liam has to close his eyes for a moment and open them again to get his head straight. He’s in his bedroom, Lina is sleeping in his bed because she had a bad dream. He’s not secretly kissing Louis. He’s not secretly kissing anyone. Zayn wouldn’t care even if he was secretly kissing Louis.

It’s been a very long time since he had any dreams where kissing Louis was a key piece. At least today he doesn’t have to spend the whole day with Louis the way he did when he was having the dreams regularly. Bear and Lina will be much better distractions.

They have a quiet day. Liam ignores all his messages in favour of watching movies with Bear and Lina for most of the day, letting Lina hide her face in his lap at the scary bits of the movie Bear picks and carefully pretending not to notice when Bear gets misty-eyed at the one Lina chose. It’ll be summer holidays soon, and Lina’s ninth birthday. He won’t get to see them as much, since Bear will go on at least one holiday with Cheryl, and Lina will spend more time with Sam when they haven’t got school to worry about.

He’s got no idea what he’s going to do with them during the tour. It’s not something he can just ask Alex to sort, either, since the custody agreements are all legal things. Sam and Cheryl will have their own ideas, too; it’s not like Liam’s been on a real tour in a long time. Liam doesn’t want to think about it; he wants to spend a dreary Sunday afternoon letting Bear and Lina throw crisps at each other when they think he’s not looking.

The day passes too quickly and it feels like only a few moments have gone by when he’s herding them off to bed, letting Bear read Lina her bedtime story but keeping a close eye to make sure he actually turns out his light after. He’s probably on his mobile, but Liam doesn’t feel like being strict about that tonight.

Instead, he shuffles down the hall to the far bedroom, the one where his new keyboard is set up in the corner. He hasn’t played around with it much, as he’s been letting his days fill up with other things, but the idea of a song that’s been in his head is still there. He’s careful to turn the volume down low before he lets his fingers settle onto the keys, and the melody comes back to him easily.

Maybe he ought to write it down, or at least record it so he doesn’t forget. He hasn’t yet, but it might happen. It’ll be easier to sort the words out that way, too, make it easier to see how they line up against the notes and beats on a page. 

After the last time they’d written together, Louis had texted Liam that he was serious about getting Liam’s name put on the songs, that Liam deserved credit for it work. It wasn’t really what Liam had been thinking about as they’d worked on the songs, but now he’s thinking about it. About how he and Louis had talked about being business partners, building something together that was more than just the performing part of it. 

He knows why it didn’t happen, and it’s been years since he thought about it but—well, he’s thinking about it now. Writing with Louis regularly, getting to create with him nearly all the time, instead of it just being something that Liam pleads for from time to time.

Writing was always best with a partner, and Liam misses it. This one song he’s got into his head, he thinks he wants that to just be his, but usually he’s most productive tossing ideas back and forth with someone, and there’s never been anyone he was able to do that with as comfortably as he did with Louis.

The thing about working with Louis—the thing about Louis, really—was that Liam loved it and loved him and also that he’s never met anyone before or since who truly just inspired people to pick fights with him. Liam knows how deeply he cares about people, and how much he values other people’s opinions, but he can’t remove from his memory the knowledge of how prickly Louis could be. Can be. The way he’d get in a fit of pique about nothing, or wake up one morning and suddenly be the most particular person Liam’d ever met. 

God, the way they fought sometimes. 

Other times, Liam would just let him get his way until he got bored with trying to pick fights. That was usually Niall’s method, and most of the time it was how he saw Harry handle Louis as well. 

Zayn always picked the fight, pushed back just as hard as Louis did like they were testing to see who would break first. They always made up afterward, would scream themselves nearly hoarse and then, somehow, end by falling over each other laughing. Until they didn’t. 

The fights Liam had with Louis weren’t like his fights with his sisters, they weren’t ridiculous tiffs over nothing at all. It was important stuff, about the band and their music and where their lives were going. That made it easier to get really worked up, to take every word incredibly personally. But somehow that also made it easier to make up after. He knew that Louis only wanted the best for them all, even if their ideas of what would be best weren’t always the same.

It feels kind of silly to miss fighting with someone, but he does. He hasn’t had a single fight with Louis since they started any of this reunion business, and he isn’t sure he’s going to be able to trust it at all until he and Louis scream at each other for a while and then are okay after. 

The first time they’d well and truly fought after they sorted themselves out early on and stopped being at each other’s throats constantly, Liam had been so terrified. All the fear from the first days, when he thought he was constantly on the brink of being kicked out, had come rushing back. Everyone else loved Louis; what if they decided that they’d rather have Louis than him, and then Liam would just have to add one more failed attempt at being a singer to his list. 

But the next morning Louis was perfectly cheerful. He doled out hugs and kisses over breakfast, and the one he pressed into Liam’s hair felt like, if not an apology, at least an acknowledgement of things being okay today. Something settled in Liam’s stomach, warm and pleased, and he’d been able to feel himself adapting to something new. To being in a group of people—friends—where they could have that kind of fight and it didn’t end with everyone dropping him but with them just making up the next day.

He wants that, the certainty that disagreements won’t ruin the bigger relationship. He wants to be invested enough in a relationship, in his life with someone, that he wants to fight for it, or about it, or anything. He had that with Louis, and with the rest of the band even, though he can’t deny that it was special with Louis. He’s had it with a few other people, but it was never the same. His life’s never been fully entwined with anyone else’s the way theirs were.

The way he thought it would be with Louis after the band, when they were going to keep working together. 

He doesn’t know whether the other lads believed it would really just be a break, or if they were lying all along. He was scared to ask then, and it doesn’t matter now, not really. He doesn’t even know whether his plans with Louis falling apart was just circumstance or if Louis had already decided at that point he needed a cleaner break.

At the time, Louis had quietly acknowledged all the ways his life was unexpectedly complicated, not that Liam had needed him to. He hadn’t apologised, but he was never much for apologies—still isn’t—and Liam didn’t need one, anyway. He had Louis’s acknowledgement that things had gone sideways, and he still had Louis’s regular texts and late night phone calls and the way his voice got rough when he was scared and didn’t have the words to talk about it so would instead ramble about other things until he fell asleep.

Mostly, Liam thinks, he wishes he’d fought harder when he saw Louis drifting away. 

He’s spent a long time in his own thoughts before he remembers that he ostensibly came in here to write music and that his hands are still on the keys. Maybe he ought to be writing lyrics tonight, trying to mold his thoughts into some semblance of a story. It’s not like the things he used to write, back when he was writing for himself regularly, but there’s something there.

Liam ends up spending most of the evening alternating between scribbling down words, just little phrases that feel like they could go somewhere, and listening to songs he thinks come close to the point he’s trying to get at. It’s perhaps not his most efficient songwriting session, but he enjoys himself more than he expected.

—

The curiosity about Niall and Louis’s fight eats away at him, but it’s not enough to get him to actually ask Louis outright. They text about music, and their kids, and the general absurdity of Los Angeles, and they talk on the phone a few times, and Liam doesn’t ask.

Louis invites him over nearly as soon as he’s back in London, waving his hand around on the video call when Liam asks for details. “Dunno, sometime in the afternoon? Bring any kids you have to look after. It’s always a bit sad being back home alone after I’ve been with Freddie.”

After only a small bit of agonising, Liam decides to take him at his word. Louis’s never been any good at dissembling, and he has always liked having a crowded house. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have either child to offer up on this particular Thursday afternoon; Bear’s with his mum for the week, and Lina’s got a long weekend with her own mum for her birthday.

Louis doesn’t seem too disappointed, though Liam imagines he’d have been thrilled to have kids to hang out with. His hair is mussed, and he’s dressed in track bottoms and a wrinkled t-shirt. Liam doesn’t really think he’s just rolled out of bed but then, with the jet lag, he might’ve. Mostly, he looks cozy. Soft. 

Liam wants to run his fingers through Louis’s hair, and maybe tuck him back into bed. He isn’t so tired himself, but he could curl up next to Louis and sleep, just for the comfort of having Louis’s body pressed against his. It’s so easy to be comfortable with Louis, and he doesn’t know if it’s just because Louis is so familiar despite everything, or if it’s something else. He doesn’t know which pieces of the familiarity are memories and which are still true in the present.

When Liam explains why Lina’s not there, Louis exclaims about how big she’s getting with all the right enthusiasm, and Liam knows that he means it all. Louis has always been so reliably happy about anything to do with kids. That part’s still true, still a part of who Louis is. It’s reassuring in its stability, that so much has changed but this hasn’t.

Louis laughs when Liam asks if he’s just woken up, not admitting it but not denying it either, and then he laughs more when Liam scolds him. 

“Fine,” Louis grumbles, sounding like a teenager told he has to stop sneaking out of photoshoots. “I promise I tried not to,” he adds. “I’m shit at sleeping on planes now, getting old is terrible.”

“Can’t you just get one of those fancy LA doctors to give you sleeping pills? Doesn’t everyone in LA have sleeping pills?” Liam says, even though he can’t stop grinning.

“I tried that a while back,” Louis says, groaning. “I was so groggy I could barely get off the plane.”

Still, once he perks up, Louis is energetic late into the evening, long after Liam starts to fade. He keeps going through afternoon video games, and through a haphazard attempt to cook themselves some dinner, and through the movie they watch while they eat. Admittedly, it’s an edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller that has even Liam sitting bolt upright and gasping several times, and it’ll be a minute before he’s calmed down enough to sleep.

He laughs, only a little hysterical, as the credits roll. “I think my heart is still pounding,” he says.

“Oh good,” Louis says. “I thought that one might wake you up. Now you won’t want to sleep for ages and you can keep me company while I’m up thinking it’s still the middle of the afternoon.”

Liam kicks at him, not particularly vigorously, and Louis catches his stockinged foot. He presses his thumb into the arch, catching against a knot Liam didn’t know was there, but the moment Liam starts to relax into it he lightens the pressure and wiggles his thumb around.

“Fuck,” Liam yelps, wrenching his foot out of Louis’s grasp.

“I’m so glad you’re still ticklish,” Louis says, smug. “I was afraid having kids climb all over you might’ve trained you out of it.”

Liam snorts. “Well, having a boy band climb all over me didn’t manage to do that, so I’m not surprised my kids didn’t manage it either.”

Louis looks contemplative, briefly. “I suppose not,” he says. “We could do a full test, though. Check more than just your right foot.”

“I’d rather not,” Liam says, and he knows it’ll just encourage Louis, but then, so would have saying he thought it was a good idea. If Louis wants to tickle him, he’s going to, and Liam’s only ever going to put up a token fight. He learned to fight about the things that mattered to him, about music and tours and all the big things but this? Louis wanting to get a rise out of him, wanting to make him laugh? It’s easiest to just go with it, and then Liam gets to see the way Louis’s eyes crinkle up and his smile turns smug when he gets what he wanted. 

“You up for another movie?” Louis asks, and he’s grinning. Liam thinks about saying no, that it’s late and he needs to go home. That he has to be up early tomorrow for some reason he’ll have to make up. Giving no reason at all for saying he needs to leave, just doing it. But Louis is next to him on the sofa, and he’s grinning like he wants Liam to break some rules with him, and well. Liam doesn’t have any reason to go home, really. It’ll just be quiet and empty and Louis won’t be there. 

“I can stay a bit longer,” Liam says, knowing even as he says it that it’ll probably mean falling asleep here on Louis’s sofa, waking up too early with his back and neck stiff, dragging himself back to his own house in the bleary hours of the morning. Unless it means eating breakfast with Louis in his kitchen, listening to Louis tease him for his tea choices while still making it exactly the way Liam likes, sleepily chattering away until they’re awake enough to have a real conversation.

Liam’s not sure which option would be worse, but as he’s sipping a cup of tea at Louis’s kitchen table the next morning, he can’t bring himself to be upset that he didn’t have to slink back home to a lonely breakfast.

—

Liam has Niall over for dinner again, after Lina hints several times that she wants more cooking lessons. He offers to get her a different teacher, but she’s already imprinted on Niall, who just laughs when Liam calls him to relay her request. “Sucker,” he says, and all Liam can do is laugh with him and say, “I know you are, but what am I?”

“You spend way too much time kids, mate,” Niall mutters, but Liam can hear the fondness.

It’s comfortable puttering around the kitchen with Niall there; Niall’s always had a knack for making himself fit anywhere he goes, for making situations feel easy no matter how complicated they actually are. It makes him a very pleasant guest, especially when Liam’s recently spent an inadvisable amount of time tangled up in his head, staring at scribbled song lyrics trying to find words for things he’s spent a big part of the last ten years trying not to feel.

Niall’s voice saying his name startles him out of his thoughts. He’s asking about extra measuring spoons, and Lina’s already hurrying to show him where they are. Liam’s not really needed here, except that he wants to watch, so he lets his thoughts wander as he does. There’s not as many opportunities for it when he’s got a nine-year-old-next-week to keep an eye on, but he trusts Niall.

Only a few nights ago, he was sleeping on Louis’s sofa, and he can’t stop comparing how they each fit into his life. Niall makes himself fit wherever he is, neatly settling himself into whatever space is available. Louis makes space for himself, bending everyone around him until he fits in comfortably and, somehow, everyone is always happy to do it. Liam thinks he might even like that version of himself better. That’s the bit that scares him. It’s so easy to let Louis back in anywhere he asks, and Liam likes his life better when he does it. 

He still fits so easily with Louis, and it’s so easy to fall back into thinking about Louis the same way he did before. Liam’s not sure of how to stop that, except reminding himself that it won’t do him any good. Maybe having Niall over will help to remind him that they’re all like this with each other, that Louis isn’t the only person who fit into his life that easily. 

The other option would be to step back, to limit the amount he lets Louis back in. It’s what Ruth would tell him to do. It’s the safest, Liam thinks, and he also thinks it’s already too late for that. Not that he needs to figure it out right now, when he could be watching what’s happening in his kitchen and making sure his own daughter isn’t being taught how to kill him in his sleep.

He forces the thoughts away, even though he knows they’ll come rushing back the moment he has quiet time to himself. Right now he’s going to let Lina order him around, checking her instructions with Niall over her head, and he’s not going to think about what this moment might look like in other versions of his life. 

It gets him through the meal, and through herding a hyper-tired Lina into her bed, where she insists that she wants five bedtime stories and then promptly falls asleep halfway through the first. Liam lingers for a moment, brushing her hair off her forehead and watching her. She’s got so big, grown so full of ideas and interests and dreams. He allows himself to wish, for just a few breaths, that there was someone he could have shared all of those years with. 

In the last days, when they both knew it was ending and all that was left was for them to ring their solicitors, Sam had admitted that she’d thought having a kid might’ve made it work, might’ve made things click in a way they weren’t anymore. It was the kind of thing that should’ve been an earth-shattering shock to Liam and wasn’t, because somehow he’d known all along. He doesn’t have it in him to hold it against her, not when he knows that he tried everything he could think of to save their marriage. It was just lucky for him that he really did want another kid.

But regardless of how he ended up here, it stings that there’s no one leaning against the doorframe, just watching Liam watch Lina sleep, no one who can curl an arm around his back as he leaves the bedroom and murmur into his ear about how she’s growing up too fast. People say it, of course, and he shares plenty with his sisters and his parents but it’s not the same. It’s not like having someone he can talk to about every detail, someone who’ll chuckle at the art pinned to the refrigerator and help him defuse sibling scuffles even though Bear and Lina actually butt heads far less than Liam did with his own sisters, not like having another person fully invested in all the highs and lows and minutiae.

He sighs, as soft as he can, and leans down to kiss Lina’s head before he rejoins Niall in the kitchen. Niall has not done any of the tidying up, which is completely fair, but Liam can’t help looking at it all with dread. Maybe in the morning.

He tilts his head toward the living room. “You have time for a bit of telly or do you need to head out?” he asks.

Niall gestures to the open beer that’s in front of him. “A bit of telly sounds great.”

“Nothing too loud,” Liam warns. “I know the house seems big but it’s got the wildest acoustics. You can hear basically everything in every room.”

They chatter softly about the options, which are not particularly promising, but after a few minutes of hopeless scrolling Liam manages to find some kind of absurd competition show, one of the ones where people do completely implausible physical feats under completely unrealistic circumstances. It doesn’t take a lot of attention, but it’ll do for something to put on quietly in the background. Niall starts talking over the program right away. 

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with Louis,” Niall says. There’s no preamble, no gently sliding into it. Liam appreciates that, even if his first instinct is to shrug, to dissemble, to say that it’s nothing. 

It isn’t, though, and Niall’s already forgiven him a lot. He doesn’t need to ask Niall to put up with obvious falsehoods too. There’s every chance that Niall won’t, that Niall’s already fed up with the lot of them and their secrets and half-truths and misdirections.

He doesn’t know all the details of the row Niall and Louis had, and he can’t ask for that without offering something of himself, too. Besides, they always worked best when they weren’t keeping secrets. 

“I’ve been helping him with some of his writing,” Liam says, and the words come so easily that he can’t understand why he was reluctant to share them. Niall smiles at him, obviously surprised but also, and Liam almost can’t believe it, pleased.

“Yeah?” Niall says, his voice soft. Warm in a way that Liam has missed so much that suddenly hearing it makes him ache. It’s been there in fits and starts since they started doing this again but it used to be every day, and he thinks he might want that again.

“Yeah,” Liam says, unable to contain his smile. “He asked for my help with something and it went well so I’ve helped out a few more times and now he’s saying he’s going to put my name on things.”

Niall takes a long sip from his drink and puts his feet up on Liam’s coffee table. “Do you want him to?”

Liam mirrors the movement, his legs crossed at the ankle on the table in front of them. “I think I do.” His voice isn’t perfectly steady, but the admission feels good. “I missed writing and—” The rest of the sentence is harder to say. He doesn’t know if he can pull _I missed music_ from his throat yet, or if he needs to sit with that one for longer. 

Niall exhales softly, almost a sigh. “I don’t think I could have just stopped,” he says. “I don’t really understand how you did.”

“I don’t either,” Liam says. He laughs, the only way to keep the words from landing with a heavy honesty he’s not prepared for. “There was just a lot going on, and then suddenly I had Lina mostly by myself, and then it had been so long that I didn’t know how to get started again.” Niall just hums, taking another pull from his drink. Liam smiles, almost wry. “And then Louis just asked, like it was nothing, and now—I don’t know.”

There’s something wary in Niall’s expression. Not angry or upset, but a thread of concern that Liam wishes weren’t there.

“Have you asked him about what happened, before? I know things with you two weren’t good.”

Liam shakes his head, but he can’t resist the urge to hedge. “Things weren’t good with me and much of anyone, Nialler.”

“I’m just worried about you,” Niall says, his voice tighter now. It’s the way Liam’s sisters talked to him when he was at his messiest, his worst at answering calls. It’s not so different from what Ruth said when Liam visited her, if lighter on the details. Hopefully. Unless he’s guessed a lot, or Harry blabbed.

“I’m doing better now,” Liam insists, and Niall nods.

“Are you going to stay better?” he asks. “Because, actually, it fucking sucked when two of my oldest friends stopped answering my messages.”

There’s not much Liam can say to argue with that, because it’s exactly what he did. He can’t answer for Louis, but then, Niall isn’t asking him to. He’s just asking Liam to answer for himself, for the way he slipped away from almost everything tethering him to the people around him.

Liam lets out a slow breath, closing his eyes for a few heartbeats. He doesn’t want to make promises and break them, but he does want to hold himself to this. Having Niall cooking dinner with Lina, sitting on his sofa afterward and being quiet company, it’s not what Liam was wishing for earlier, but it’s still better than the nothing he had before this. It takes a village or whatever it is that people say. 

And maybe even more than that, it makes him believe that the other things are possible. He’d started to doubt, some, especially after everything that happened with Becca. But he doesn’t need to get into all of that right now. Right now he just needs to have an answer for Niall, an answer that’s enough of a promise to carry some weight but not Liam setting himself up for failure.

He swallows hard.

“I don’t know if I can promise that,” he says, forcing himself to meet Niall’s eyes. To watch the way Niall’s face shutters when he says it. “I—I think I can promise to not cut everyone off if it happens again, though.”

Liam doesn’t close his eyes as Niall mulls that over. He makes himself watch the way Niall’s mouth twists, thoughtful and not entirely happy, and the way he shifts on the sofa. 

“Okay,” he says finally. “Just—you’ve got to tell me what actually happened eventually. And there better be a good reason you couldn’t tell me earlier.”

Liam thinks about Louis curled up next to him, about how it felt when they got the words to click, about falling asleep on Louis’s sofa and quietly drinking tea together the next morning. He thinks about the things he’s never explained to anyone, and the things he and Louis still haven’t talked about, and the terrifying thread of hope in the pit of his stomach, the belief he’s scared to think about too hard, that things might stick this time. There are answers that Louis deserves before anyone else gets them, and if that means he only gets conditional forgiveness now, that’s okay.

“There is,” he says softly. “And I will.”

—

Liam’s phone buzzes in his pocket in the middle of Lina’s birthday dinner with his parents, a massive spread of all her favourite foods. They’re sure to be sent back to London with heaps of leftovers, because his mum can’t resist spoiling her at every turn.

He doesn’t want to be rude to his family, and it is Lina’s birthday celebration, but—he can’t resist checking the message and tapping out a quick reply when he sees it’s from Louis, asking about whether Liam can bounce some ideas around with him to help him get some lyrics straight in his head. _Later_ , Liam sends. _Birthday dinner for Lina w mum n dad_. 

Louis replies with a single smiling face, and Liam’s stomach twists a little. Part of him wants to hide in the loo and let Louis call him now, just to hear Louis excitedly, determinedly working through the lyrics. He might’ve done it when he was younger, when he felt like his relationships with his family were less fragile. But Lina is already calling for him, wanting his attention to tell a story he’s definitely already heard several times. She likes an audience, and Liam’s happy to provide. 

It’s so sweet that she wanted a big family to do for her birthday that Liam couldn’t hold much of anything against her this weekend anyway.

There’s a short break after dinner, filled with shrieking kids running every which way, and Bear giving Liam a series of long-suffering looks that Liam, personally, thinks he’s entirely too young to be capable of. But then, he does have four girls under the age of 10 running circles around him, and he’s been tasked with keeping an eye on the sleeping baby while everyone else gets the cake ready. Liam suspects she won’t be sleeping for much longer, either, and he’s proven right when she wakes screaming only a few minutes later. Bear hands her off, looking a little nervous, like he thinks there’s a chance he’ll be blamed for the wailing child. It makes Liam chuckle softly to himself, even as Ruth disappears into the kitchen to feed her while the rest of them settle to try and get Lina to pick a single film to watch. 

By the time the party is winding down, the younger kids’ eyes getting heavy where they’re all piled together in the living room, Liam’s felt his mobile buzz another half-dozen times at least, which likely means he’s got a whole stack of messages from Louis about whatever it is he’s working on tonight.

Ruth’s herding all the girls off to bed, and there’s already a stack of bedding neatly folded next to the sofa, so Liam quietly murmurs his excuses and disappears up the stairs for a bit. The baby’s already asleep in his room, but he settles himself on the bed with his back against the wall to read the messages, feeling every bit like a teenager sneaking away to text the person he fancies. He was ruder about it as a teenager, pulling his mobile out at the dinner table to text girls, and sometimes to text Louis, which it took him a long time to put the pieces of together in his head. And now he’s twenty years older, an adult with all the trappings, and he’s still curled up on the old bed in the smallest bedroom at his parents’ house tapping away at the screen of a mobile phone.

The texts from Louis are somewhat disjointed, strings of lyrics followed by rambling descriptions of what he wants the song to be, followed by more lyrics, followed by a brief explanation of the group’s sound. Liam’s almost embarrassed by how easily he makes sense of it all, the words just slotting into place in his mind. He replies with an acknowledgement, and then a picture of the baby asleep across the room to indicate that he can’t call.

 _Crowded at mum and dad’s this weekend_ , he captions it. Louis sends back laughing faces, and then a very short audio clip that Liam risks playing. It’s barely more than a suggestion of a tune, but it’s enough for Liam to get started pulling some ideas together, typing out messages of strings of lyrics that are just as disjointed as the ones Louis was sending. He’s certain that Louis will be able to figure it out, and he’s right to be: a response comes only a few minutes later, a few tweaks to the words Liam sent and another brief video clip. Louis is singing in this one, and Liam watches it three times before he answers.

They go in that vein long enough that the baby wakes, briefly, and Liam has to hold her until she settles. He sends Louis a picture of that too, her tiny face tucked into his neck. _Hows the family_ is the message he gets in response. It’s not quite what Liam expected, given that they’ve been talking about song lyrics and rhyme schemes and whether not or turns of phrase scan, but then—it’s Louis.

 _Good_ , he replies. _nice 2 see everyone together, its been too long_. 

The typing bubble appears and disappears a few times before the next message from Louis comes through. It’s just a string of hearts, but then another immediately appears beneath it: _miss that_ , it says. _haven’t done a good enough job getting together with my family recently_.

Liam’s stomach twists miserably just thinking about it. Louis and his family had always been—well. Liam missed his family when he was touring constantly, but he also isn’t ever going to forget the time he accidentally interrupted Louis on the phone with his mum, tucked in a deep corner of a hallway Liam had wandered down in search of a place to have a few minutes of quiet. The X-Factor tour was a chaotic time, and he’d just needed to breathe for a few minutes.

But Louis was already in the corner, sat on the floor with his back against the wall and his knees pulled up to his chest, his mobile pressed to his face as he spoke in a frantic whisper. What Liam remembers most clearly, though, is the redness of his eyes, the way he sniffed wetly when he realised Liam was there and blinked too quickly. Until that moment, it hadn’t really occurred to Liam that Louis was as scared as he was, missed his family as much as Liam did. Or maybe more, since Liam wasn’t hiding in corners to cry down the phone. 

“Hi,” Liam said softly, unsure of his welcome. But Louis wasn’t screaming at him to get out, and Liam took a few tentative steps forward, until he was close enough to sit down next to Louis on the floor. Louis sniffed again, and then shook his head.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Just got a bit emotional talking to my mum.” He cleared his throat. “My sisters keep asking her when I’m going to come back, she said.”

Liam wasn’t sure, in that moment, what Louis wanted from him, but he took a shot in the dark and wrapped a loose arm around Louis’s shoulders. Not tugging him into a hug, not pressing himself up against Louis’s side, nothing like that yet. But a careful touch that he hoped indicated that comfort was available, if Louis wanted it.

Louis didn’t curl into it, didn’t pull Liam’s arm closer the way he would in later years, but he didn’t pull away either, and to Liam in that moment, it felt like a victory.

Pushing his luck, he whispered, “Tell me about your sisters, yeah? They seemed nice when I met them but I bet they’re real terrors like you.” Louis laughed, rough and still a bit wet, and he did.

When Liam looks at his mobile again, he’s got another message from Louis. _things got complicated_ , is all it says. Liam wants to press the call button, because this doesn’t feel like something they should be talking about over text. But then, maybe if they were actually speaking, they’d just circle back to the music, or to stories of the antics Liam’s family has got up to today. Maybe it’s easier to say these things when no one has to actually say them aloud.

 _im sorryyyy_ , Liam sends, feeling like it’s entirely insufficient. He’s in the process of typing out a string of heart emojis, just to make it feel less pathetic, when Louis answers.

 _its getting better_ , the message says. _i still miss them tho. and freddie is so far away._

Liam’s eyes feel hot for a moment, thinking about the nights that he didn’t know how to make himself reach out to anyone else but at least he still had Bear and Lina taking up space in his life and his house and filling his days with their delightful mundane lives.

 _I cant imagine_ , he answers. He really, really can’t.

 _house feels too empty tonight_ , Louis replies, almost a non-sequitur. It’s not really, though, because Liam knows exactly how it feels. 

He could reply telling Louis to just call them, that they miss him too, but it’s so much more complicated than Liam can wrap his head around. All the pieces of growing up and figuring out how you fit with your family a thousand times over, every time your life changes, that’s hard enough. He can’t imagine adding in all the grief and loss Louis has dealt with. He can’t imagine having siblings who didn’t know him before he was Liam off One Direction. 

_you can stay at mine for a night or two when we’re back in london_ , Liam types, but he chickens out and deletes it before he sends it. He spends a long time agonising over what he could say instead, what could be the right level of offer to make right now. Drinks is too casual, and it won’t make Louis’s house less empty anyway. Maybe Liam could invite himself over, to be someone filling the space. But then that doesn’t feel right either. Liam is at a loss, or maybe he can’t fix this at all.

Finally, after he’s gone entirely too long without answering, he settles on _Im sorry_. It’s insufficient, he knows, but Louis answers with a few hearts and a smiling face and Liam has this moment where he clearly thinks _fuck it_. 

_You can come over n hang out w me n lina n bear whenever u want_ , he types, and this time he does send it. Louis doesn’t answer for a long time, so long that Liam puts his mobile facedown on the bed and gets himself ready for bed. Staring at it won’t make a message come if it’s not going to. Maybe that wasn’t what Louis wanted to hear.

He’s about to get in bed when he hears the buzz— _thanks_ , the message says. Liam feels like he’s gone warm all over, pleased and maybe flushed and he didn’t think something so small could still do this to him. It’s like being a kid, being so caught up in wanting to be around someone that even the suggestion of getting to do it makes him unable to stop smiling. He sends back a pleased smiling face.

Liam’s lying down, his eyes starting to slip closed, when his phone buzzes again. He thought Louis’d fallen asleep, it’s been so long since his last message, but then— _i miss working with you_ , his phone screen says. Liam stares at the words for so long that his eyes start to blur. _we should make it a real thing, not just for when we feel like fucking around with music a bit_.

If he doesn’t open the messages tonight, he can pretend to have been asleep and not answer them until morning. He can have the night to think about it, to think about what it would mean to have another go at being writing partners with Louis, outside of the context of being in One Direction together. If they could build something for themselves separate from the band. 

Maybe unsurprisingly, he doesn’t manage to fall asleep with all those thoughts bouncing around in his head. 

In fact, Liam lies awake for so long thinking about Louis’s texts that he has to shuffle down to the kitchen for a glass of water, and he’s surprised to discover his mum there too, leaning against the counter with a mug of tea in steaming her hands. “It’s herbal,” she whispers before Liam can say anything.

“Right,” he whispers back. Bear’s asleep just on the other side of the wall, stretched out across the sofa. He’s nearly too tall to fit on it comfortably; they’ll have to rethink the sleeping arrangements again soon. 

In all honesty, the house just isn’t big enough for the whole family at once anymore. It’s bigger than the one they all grew up in, but even with Lina old enough to bunk in with most of her cousins in a terrifying sleepover room, Liam’s still sharing with the baby, her pack n play tucked into a corner of his room where it mostly fits. If Liam had someone he was bringing to these things, it would throw everything off—he wouldn’t be able to squeeze into the single bed in the smallest bedroom anymore. Still, the idea of getting a hotel doesn’t sit right, and he somehow doubts his mum and dad can be persuaded to buy an even bigger house. 

“What are you doing up so late?” his mum asks softly, and Liam shrugs. He could tell her—he should tell her—but he isn’t quite over being startled by finding another person awake well past midnight. Well, he wouldn’t have been startled if it had been Bear, but he seems to be completely out. 

“What are you doing up so late?” he retorts, and she shrugs too.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she says. 

“I couldn’t either,” he murmurs. She offers him a cup of the herbal tea, just a hint of the concerned mum look she’d turned on him so often when he was younger ghosting across her face. He always wanted to grow up to be someone his mum and dad didn’t have to worry about; they already had so many other things to fret over, and he knew even then that they worried a lot. Sometimes he would overhear them talking in the kitchen after he was meant to be asleep, voices low and urgent as they talked about his health, or if he was making friends, or if he was working himself to the bone.

He knows even better now, because the idea of Bear or Lina going through all the things he did makes him feel like he might be sick. God, Bear’s barely younger than he was when he went out for the X-Factor the first time.

His mum presses the cup of tea into his hands, lightly flavoured and overly sweetened and Liam wants to protest that he’s not a kid anymore, he’s learned to drink tea that isn’t mostly sugar but honestly, this is what he wants right now. He wants to be babied a little tonight, in a house that isn’t the house he grew up in but feels like it sometimes, when he’s surrounded by all the same old trinkets and kitchen knick knacks. “Thanks,” he says, smiling. He doesn’t think it’s too obviously weak, even if he is feeling a little melancholy tonight.

She smiles too, leaning against the counter next to him. It’s still odd to him that he’s taller than her, even after so many years.

“What’s keeping you up?” he asks. Only a little bit to cut her off at the pass and stop her asking him.

“Oh, it’s no one thing,” she says, waving her hand dismissively. “Lina’s so big, you know. It feels like she’s growing up even faster than you did.”

Liam scoffs. “You’re not lying awake at night thinking about how big Lina is, come off it.”

She shakes her head, the corner of her mouth turning up wryly. “Well, no,” she allows. “But she’s going to be ten in a year, and you’re—well, you haven’t got anyone to help you.”

“Sam helps,” Liam says. “And I’ve got you and Dad, and Ruth and Nic sometimes too. Even Bear helps a bit now.” 

His mum leans just enough that her shoulder brushes his. “You know what I mean,” she says. “You haven’t got someone in it with you.”

He can’t exactly argue with that, since he’s spent his own fair share of late nights lying awake thinking about it. “Suppose not,” he says, aiming for casual, fairly sure he misses it by a lot.

“Just don’t like thinking of you all alone in that big house,” she says. “I worry you’re lonely.”

“I’m not,” he murmurs. It’s a lie, and they likely both know it, but it’s meant to be a comforting one. He hopes she knows that.

“What about you?” she asks after a long sip of her tea.

Liam shrugs. “I was texting with Louis and got a bit too wound up to sleep right away.” She hums, a soft and interested noise, and Liam isn’t at all sure what to make of it. 

His mum and dad, they’re not—they’re not mean spirited, or ignorant, or anything like that, but until Liam went and got all famous, he doesn’t think they’d ever much had to think about how much bigger the world is outside their lives and their kind of family. Liam knows he hadn’t, until it had been shoved in his face, which happened because of them, and because they were willing to let him go even if they couldn’t really fathom what he was going into.

Not that Liam could either. Not that he really thinks anyone could have fathomed what he was getting himself into.

But now, here, years later, it means that he doesn’t always know what his mum thinks of him.

“He asked my advice on some songwriting he’s doing,” Liam adds, just to fill the silence. His mum hums again. “We’ve done a bit of it these last few months.”

If his mum hums again, he’s going to start to feel like he’s in a therapy session, the therapist carefully not quite giving him enough feedback because she knows it’ll draw him out more, until he’s talking about the things he wishes he could avoid. 

Luckily, she doesn’t. “If I ask you about how the reunion is going, will you tell me?” she says instead. Despite himself, Liam sighs. “I don’t need every detail,” she continues. “But I know how much you loved those boys and I worried when it seemed like you’d really stopped speaking to them.” She exhales softly, setting down her mug, now empty. “They were good for you,” she murmurs. “You were good for them, too. We all used to say, us parents, that it was good that you could be positive influences on each other.”

Liam might actually cry, if she keeps going. It’s late, and he’s spent a lot of time tonight thinking about Louis, and a lot of time before that thinking about how quickly Lina’s growing up. He doesn’t know if he can pull this piece of his heart out and lay it on the table as well.

His mum must be able to read it on his face, because she makes a pained noise. “Liam,” she says, and she sounds so hurt that Liam has to suck in a shuddering breath to steady himself.

“I’m sorry, Mum,” he says. “I don’t know how to talk about it at all.” His tea is empty, and he wishes it wasn’t, both because he wants to be able to take a sip instead of speaking and because he wants the comfort of it. “I’m scared that if I talk about it too much I’ll get my hopes up and it’ll be worse when it all falls apart.”

As soon as he’s said the words, she turns and pulls him into a hug, and he slumps against her until he can press his face into her shoulder. Her hand curls around the back of his head, and he feels like a little kid, like hugging his mum is going to be able to fix all of his problems. It won’t, but he’s allowed to close his eyes and pretend for a few moments. 

“Oh, Liam,” she says, the words a breath against the side of his head. 

The words come easier after that.

“It’s been going well,” he mumbles against her, determined to keep his face hidden until the angle starts to hurt his back too much. “I’ve been having fun. It’s nice to get to spend so much time with the lads again, and it feels like it’s all slowly clicking back together the way it used to.”

“That sounds good,” his mum says, slow and measured. Liam forces himself to stand back up. He’s got to drive back to London tomorrow, which means he can’t have a kink in his neck so bad he can’t move.

“Louis asked me tonight if I want to work with him, for real. Writing together.” The words surprise him a bit, because he hadn’t really meant to tell her. Still, as soon as he’s said it, he’s glad she knows.

“He did?” she asks, and she sounds more pleased than she does surprised. Liam’s not sure what to make of that, but it seems promising. He nods, and she smiles at him. “That’s nice,” she says. “You haven’t said anything but I’ve always wondered if you missed writing.”

She didn’t specifically say _if you missed writing with Louis_ , but Liam suspects she intends for him to read between the lines. He is, either way. And he did miss writing with Louis even more than he missed writing by himself. He nods instead of making himself put his answer into words. Maybe he should make another cup of tea to sip when he doesn’t want to say something, except then he’ll have to get up three times to wee and there’s not a lot of night left. 

“I haven’t decided what to tell him yet,” he mumbles before his mum asks any more questions. He knows what’s coming, and as hard as it is to say, at least he gets to get it off his chest.

“Why not yes?” she asks, soft. “If you miss it and he wants you to—”

“Dunno,” Liam mutters. “Don’t want it to blow up in my face, I suppose.”

His mum hums. “What’s the worst that could happen?” She sounds all level-headed and mumly. Liam rather thinks that with two kids of his own he shouldn’t need someone to do this for him.

“It all explodes spectacularly and Louis and I never speak again and all the rest of the boys choose him and they never speak to me again either and it’s all my fault and the reunion tour is ruined because none of us can be in the same room as each other anymore.”

There’s a quirk of amusement in her mouth. “Now I don’t think that’s very likely, do you?”

Liam shrugs. “Perhaps not.”

“How about we try for what’s the worst thing that’s likely to happen?”

That’s a harder question, forcing him to pick apart the fears he was letting dance around his head as he was lying awake earlier. He forces a thin smile, and his mum touches his shoulder gently. “Probably that it doesn’t work out writing with Louis and I have to figure out my life all over again for the thousandth time. Maybe it really will be the thing that keeps us from being friends ever again.” He lets out a rough sigh. “Not that we were much of friends the last few years.”

“Well then,” she says. Her voice is carefully blank of any expression Liam can read. “That’s no good, but it’s no worse than things were before this, either, is it?” 

Liam shakes his head. She’s right, of course. 

“So, what’s the best that can happen?”

The bottom of Liam’s stomach drops out, and he sucks in a sharp breath that’s absolutely not subtle. It’s to his mum’s real credit that she doesn’t comment on it, and he’s glad, because he isn’t ready to list off all the ways he’s got his hopes up about things that could come out of this reunion experiment. He hasn’t even let himself think about all of them.

“It might,” he starts, trailing off as he realises he still needs to decide where the sentence ends. His mum gives a look that’s clearly urging him to continue. “It might be as good as it was before.” He pauses, considering how much he wants to let himself hope. “It might be better.”

He thought he was ready to deal with the things he knew would be showing on her face after he said it, but when he actually meets her eyes, it turns out he wasn’t at all ready to see the naked hope there.

“You think it might be better?” she asks, and her voice wavers. 

“It could be,” Liam says. He has to breathe in slowly through his nose to keep his own voice steady. “We know ourselves better. We know the industry better.” He doesn’t say that he thinks maybe this time it won’t fall apart when their lives implode, because there’s no way to guarantee that. But he feels steadier now than he did before, and he thinks Louis does too. He thinks they might be able to do this, the two of them. Even if the band isn’t long-term, he and Louis writing together could be. 

The thought of it makes his head spin a little.

“That could be quite good,” his mum says, soft again now. “I know how much you liked writing with Louis before.”

Liam nods, the motion jerky. “I did,” he says. “I do.”

Silence falls around them then, lingering for a long moment. Liam doesn’t know what else to say, but his mum manages to find some words.

“Do you want me to tell you what I think or do you want to sort it for yourself?” she asks, finally. She looks tired, and Liam’s starting to feel the hour too. It took long enough. 

He sighs, for the hundredth time tonight. “Just tell me what to do,” he says. She laughs, low and warm, and it’s like being wrapped up in a hug after a bad day at school, or curling up in a hotel room after an exhausting interview gauntlet to let her tell him mundane stories of life at home.

“I think you should do the writing,” she says, decisive. “And you should tell your dad about it in the morning, he’ll be so pleased.”

“Okay,” Liam says. “I will.” His voice is rough, and he has to force the words past a lump in his throat, but maybe it’s good. Maybe this was good. Maybe tomorrow will be good, too, after he says yes to Louis and they start actually planning this.

—

What Liam’d forgot, in the haze of midnight chats with his mum, is that he’d invited Louis to his final DJ set before they dive truly, fully into tour rehearsals, and that it’s in two days. Louis hasn’t said yes yet, but he’s already given Liam a strong maybe, an unless-an-emergency happens type of maybe. The idea of telling Louis yes in person, of seeing him smile and then getting swept up in an enthusiastic hug, is too tempting for Liam to resist. He doesn’t try very hard, either—he texts Louis an unfairly tepid _lemme think about it, not a no tho_ in the morning, and he isn’t really surprised when he doesn’t hear anything else from Louis for the rest of the day.

The only risk is that he’ll upset Louis enough that Louis won’t come to his gig. It’s a possibility Liam hadn’t considered in the moment, and he’s going to have to hope that nearly-forty-year-old Louis is less petulant than nearly-twenty-year-old Louis was. 

Still, when he sees a text from Louis, moments before his set starts, his stomach flips over. Louis is here, and Liam can talk to him afterward, and it’ll be—well, it won’t be like it was when they were kids, but this is good too. This is a whole new way of fitting into each other’s lives.

He manages to find Louis in the crowd, catching his eye and grinning. Louis smiles back, and then he winks. It makes Liam laugh, just a soft huff of noise that no one else will notice, and then he has to concentrate. Somehow, maybe counterintuitively, knowing that Louis is there makes it easier to focus on the music, to pull everything together just the way he wants. 

It’s like he forgot how much Louis can steady him just by being there, available for a reassuring smile or a quick cuddle or to give advice. Liam doesn’t know how he forgot that, because now that he’s feeling it again, the years it was missing feel remarkably empty.

Liam’s about to vibrate out of his skin by the time he finishes up his set and makes his way down to Louis. Louis looks delighted, pulling him into a hug as soon as he’s within arm’s reach and clinging there for longer than Liam expects him to. Not that Liam’s going to be the one who steps back.

But as soon as he’s been released and he’s looking at Louis’s face again, his eyes nearly sparkling with delight, he can’t keep the words from spilling out. “I want to write with you,” he hears himself say, almost an out of body experience. “Officially, you know. Like a job.”

The smile that splits Louis’s face does things to Liam’s insides that he didn’t think they could do anymore. 

It’s entirely too easy to be a little stupid for Louis, is the thing. Liam doesn’t know how to stop himself, and he doesn’t know that he wants to, either. He’d rather get to have Louis as his friend, with the knowledge that he’ll be a little sad sometimes about the extra things he doesn’t get, than not have Louis as his friend at all. Or have Louis as his friend in name only, the kind of person he sends a birthday note to but never actually spends any time with.

“Good,” Louis says, and he’s just radiating happiness, and Liam just—fuck, Liam missed him for half a decade, for longer really, and he doesn’t know how he did it. He reaches for Louis, muscle memory as much as it’s anything else, and drags him into a hug. He wants to bury his face in the crook of Louis’s neck, just to breathe there for a moment and feel the overwhelming relief at getting to have this again, but the angle’s not good. He settles for resting his forehead against the side of Louis’s head, and that feels somehow even more intimate. Liam’s not upset about it. 

Louis’s arms are tight around his back, and the fact that he’s clinging as much as Liam is means all kinds of things that Liam’s still scared to think about. Liam doesn’t put up even a token protest when Louis drags him out to dance again. He’s having a good time tonight and he doesn’t want to pretend he isn’t.

They’re going to work together again. They’re going to be writing partners again. 

Liam is absolutely giddy with it, and dancing is as good a way as any to get the energy out, especially when Louis settles his hands on Liam’s hips and moves them in time to the music. That rapidly sends them both into fits of giggles, but then—that’s nice too. That’s what it’s like, going to a club with Louis. They laugh together. He doesn’t want this moment to end until it absolutely has to, until they’re delirious with exhaustion the way they used to get, clinging to each other to stay upright.

Louis’s isn’t trying to make him move the way he was a few moments ago, but his hands are still resting on Liam’s hips, steady and solid. It’s a grounding kind of touch, just barely keeping them linked to each other. Liam’s got years of practice at deliberately not reading between the lines when Louis is like this, handsy and affectionate and practically unwilling to stop touching Liam. Louis is like this with his friends, just tucks his face into their necks and nuzzles against them. It took Liam a while to adapt to it, back when he was young, but he eventually got to a place where he could kiss his mates and not think anything of it.

Well, at least, not think it meant anything more than them being friends. People who care for each other. 

Still, later, when Louis presses his face into the crook of Liam’s neck in the back of the car they ordered and mumbles, “Can I stay at yours tonight?” there’s a little piece of Liam that wonders.

He’s probably just lost his touch. He’s got unused to having friends who stay the night for the hell of it, who sleep in his bed because it’s nice to let someone else’s breathing lull you to sleep and get a shared pocket of heat in an overchilled hotel. Maybe he's convinced himself he’d grown out of wanting it. Maybe he’s convinced himself they’d all grown out of being like this with each other.

But Louis’s breath is warm against his skin and his voice is sleepy and the thing is, Liam wants him there. Even if he’s in the guest room instead of curled into Liam’s bed, even if it’s not to stay. 

“Sure,” Liam says. His breath ruffles Louis’s hair when he speaks. He tells himself he’s imagining that Louis presses a kiss to his neck, even if he doesn’t believe it himself. Louis is tipsy and always prone to bestowing kisses even when he isn’t. “You have to be quiet when we get in, though. You can’t wake Lina this late.”

They stumble into the house, arms draped around each other’s shoulders and trying to muffle their laughter, and Liam feels like nothing more than a teenager sneaking his date back into his parents’ house to try and have quiet, illicit sex. Except it’s his house, and Louis won’t even be sleeping in his bed, and—well, except everything. There’s nothing to make a person feel like an adult quite like coming home from a night out to a babysitter blearily watching the telly on the sofa and having to pay her and send her home. Still, it all gets done and they can drag themselves to bed quickly enough.

“Thanks,” Louis mumbles as Liam guides him down the hallway. Liam barely had anything to drink tonight, didn’t need it to feel overwhelmingly giddy, and it’s not like Louis is sloppy. He mostly just seems excited and tired and—happy. Liam likes how it looks on him.

“Anytime,” Liam says, and means it more than he’s entirely prepared to acknowledge.

Louis is snoring softly in the guest room before Liam’s even got the door closed behind him, and he has to take a moment to lean against the wall outside. He doesn’t know how to do this without wanting to reshape his whole life to make Louis fit into it, and he doesn’t know if that means he’s half in love with Louis again or if it just means that that’s the kind of friendship they have. His life is better when he lets Louis into it, livelier and happier and more fun. He’s willing to put up with a lot to get that back.

Tomorrow morning Louis will be grumpily drinking tea in his kitchen, chatting away with Lina even though he always claimed to be useless first thing in the morning. He’ll scowl at Liam and demand to be provided with breakfast, the same way he always did when he crashed at Liam’s after they stayed out too late years ago, and Liam will oblige him. Louis will make a huge fuss about how he’s a guest, but he’ll help with the washing up anyway, and he’ll probably help get Lina packed off to school too.

Liam hasn’t asked what it was like watching his son grow up on another continent half the time, because just thinking about it makes his hands go unsteady. Maybe he’ll talk to Louis about it tomorrow, about the future and what they want for themselves and—together. How they’re going to work together, professionally. It’s clear that the friendship part of it still works.

—

Liam wakes to an unusual amount of commotion for a Friday morning. The noise is coming from the kitchen, and he’s momentarily thrown. Usually when Lina wakes up before him, she comes to find him.

He remembers quickly—Louis coming home with him from the club, the two of them stumbling into the house. Liam somehow herding Louis, drunk and clingy, into the guest bedroom. Liam not thinking about how when they were twenty-somethings and they stumbled home late from clubs, they’d as often as not collapse into the same bed, whichever one was closer to the door in whoever’s hotel room was closer to the elevator. They weren’t quite that exhausted last night—or quite that drunk, which Liam suspects made a difference.

Liam rubs a hand over his face and drags himself out of bed. It’s too early, after staying out as late as they had, but he knew what he was signing up for with last night. He’s not surprised when he hears Louis’s voice from down the hall, a plea for Lina to hush so she doesn’t wake her dad. It’s sweet. A younger Louis would’ve escorted her into Liam’s bedroom to trample him until he was awake. 

In the kitchen, Lina’s settled in her usual seat. Louis has his head buried in the refrigerator, in search of god knows what. Neither of them notice him immediately, and Liam gives himself a few moments to watch them quietly. There’s a mug of tea in front of Lina, which Liam imagines is mostly milk. Still, he can just see the corner of the face she makes when she drinks from it, and he can’t resist a chuckle. “No sugar?” he asks, and she spins in her seat, still scowling about the tea.

It’s so funny he can’t even pretend to be upset with Louis. 

“You’re ruining her taste buds,” Louis murmurs in Liam’s ear as Liam slips past him to get the sugar.

“She’s nine,” Liam hisses back. 

Liam fixes his own tea, settles himself down at the table next to Lina. He’s trying not to think about what his mum said about wishing he had someone doing this with him every day. Waking up to Louis in his kitchen just feels perfectly natural, like it’s slipped right in from another version of his life where they slept in the same bed last night and Liam kissed him good morning before he got his tea. 

It’s peculiar to think about, after all the years of his life he spent not letting himself consider this at all. He had girlfriends, and Louis had girlfriends, and it wasn’t the right time anyway, and then they both had kids and their lives moved on. But Louis is still here, fixing Liam’s daughter breakfast, and he wants to keep Liam in his life after this tour, he wouldn’t have asked about working together otherwise. 

It’s a friends thing, almost certainly, but Liam can’t shake the little twinge of wonder. Of something that feels like hope. That he might not be the only one of them who felt it, back when they were young and wrapped up in each other all the time. 

He thinks about Niall saying that Louis was obsessed with him, and knows now, he can pick out from his memories now, all the ways he was just as obsessed with Louis. 

“What time do you need to leave for school, love?” Louis is asking Lina. It jars Liam out of his thoughts.

“I don’t have school today,” Lina says. Louis immediately looks skeptical, which shows exactly how much experience he has with kids. He catches Liam’s eye over her head, and Liam shakes his head.

“It’s Friday,” Louis says. “I think you do have school.” 

Lina shakes her head vigorously. Louis gives her a pointed look. “Well,” he says, “If you don’t have school then I’m sure you won’t miss any assignments or any of your friends if you just stay home all day.”

Liam watches the way Lina’s brow furrows as she contemplates what’ll happen if she gets away with her lie. “I suppose I do have school today,” she mutters. “I forgot.”

“Lina,” Liam says, a warning in his tone.

She sighs, dramatic and entirely too world-weary for a nine-year-old. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn't have fibbed.”

“Thank you for apologising,” Louis says, his voice very serious. “Now go get your clothes on so I can talk to your dad privately.”

Lina wrinkles her nose at that, but she scurries off to her room nonetheless.

“I ought to go home,” Louis says, almost as soon as Lina is out of earshot, and maybe if Liam hadn’t known him since they were teenagers who were hopeless at misdirection, he wouldn’t have picked up on the threadiness to it. But he has, and he does, and it’s so clear to him that Louis doesn’t want to leave, not yet.

“You don’t need to go if you don’t want to,” Liam hears himself say. It’s not a surprise, really—he’d been thinking it, but he didn’t expect the words to come out of his mouth. It makes Louis smile, and he brushes his hand against Liam’s on the table when he murmurs “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Liam says. He doesn’t move his hand. “I haven’t got any plans today, if you want to try and figure out what this whole writing together business will be.”

Louis smiles at him, not the reckless glee that Liam remembers but something quieter. Softer. “So responsible,” he says. “We could just dive in and see how it goes.”

Liam pulls his hand away from where it’s still touching Louis’s so he can curl both hands around his mug. It’s just barely warm to the touch, his tea going cold as he gets caught up in his thoughts. “I don’t want to mess it up,” he says. 

The silence that falls after he says that is heavy. He doesn’t know what Louis expected to hear, or if Louis wants to have this conversation at all. Liam doesn’t really want to give him a choice, even as the silence drags on. This is too important to go unaddressed.

“You didn’t before,” Louis says. He’s staring down at the table, his mouth twisted unhappily. “I was the one who dropped the ball.”

“We could’ve tried again later,” Liam points out. “And instead I was too busy with—I don’t even know. Getting married to people I shouldn’t’ve.” He doesn’t want to say _not managing to do anything with my career_ but he swallows the lump in his throat and does it anyway. “Wasting time and ignoring my career until it imploded. That kind of thing. I could’ve rung you and asked about writing.”

“You were busy raising two kids,” Louis points out, not quite accusatory but not kind either. “That takes a lot of work, even when you’re on the same continent as them. And you’ve got Lina most of the time, haven’t you?” He doesn’t say anything about what would’ve happened if Liam had rung him, and, well, that says a lot in its own way, doesn’t it? 

Liam swallows hard, nods. “Since her mum and I got divorced, yeah.”

Louis nods, slow. Maybe he means it to be reassuring, but all Liam is thinking about is the things he’s not saying. He wants—he wants Louis to offer something of himself up. He’s teased out so many pieces of the rest of them over the last few months, and they’ve offered pieces to each other, but suddenly Liam is sat here in his kitchen and he doesn’t even have an answer for why Louis suggested this in the first place, not a real one. 

But then, he hasn’t offered much of himself either. Louis asked Liam to work with him, and by asking them at all, he offered something up. Acknowledged that he missed it. Missed _them_. 

Liam takes a deep breath. “One of the reasons I’m so scared of ruining this—when I got married again, after Lina’s mum, it wasn’t a good decision. I don’t quite know why I did it, except that I was sad and lonely and I didn’t want to have Lina all by myself after Sam said she didn’t even want half custody.” Louis nods, and Liam just lets himself continue, the words spilling out. “I rushed it and I didn’t think about whether it was the right choice or what being married to Becca would be like, especially with a little kid. I don’t want to do that again, not with something important.”

There’s footsteps coming down the hallway, shoes clattering on the wood floor. Louis doesn’t say anything, but this time when his hand touches Liam’s, Liam knows it’s deliberate. He doesn’t know what it means, but his eyes track the way Louis moves, slow and deliberate until the back of his hand rests against the back of Liam’s, each still wrapped around their cooling tea.

Even if he’d wanted to, Louis didn’t get an opportunity to acknowledge the wedding he didn’t come to. Liam had texted him before he sent the invitation, he remembers suddenly. Just a short message, but one that made it clear that it was going to be a small affair, that the invitation Louis would be getting in the mail wasn’t one of hundreds and hundreds going out. 

Louis never answered the message, or the invitation.

Lina bursts into the kitchen, her backpack in one hand and her forehead crinkled up with concern. “I can’t find my homework,” she says, distressed. Liam’s dragged out of his head to pick through all the paper in her various folders, until he turns up the crumpled sheet at the bottom of the bag. She flings her arms around her neck and kisses his cheek, and then turns and runs out the door.

The door falls shut behind Lina, and the loud slam of it feels like it echoes in the silence between Liam and Louis. 

—

They’re meant to be making a plan for how writing together is going to work. Liam needs to text Alex, to keep her updated on the scheme he and Louis have come up with, even if they haven’t done much aside from agreeing on it. Well, he needs to ring Alex, but he’s not going to do that while he’s lying on the sofa with his feet draped over the top of it, so he needs to text Alex.

The problem is that talking about music is so much more fun than talking about contracts and logistics and processes. Liam ought to be asking questions about whether Louis is going to share his existing clients and partners or if they’re going to get new ones, together. Whether there’s any possibility of production work to go along with the writing.

Instead, he’s asking Louis about chord progressions, and Louis is playing him the same few bars of a song over and over on the piano, just barely tweaking the chords every time. This is the easy part, after all. Liam doesn’t know if he’s ready for the hard part yet, but he thinks he needs to become ready for it soon.

Louis pauses, turning on the piano bench so that he’s facing the sofa rather than the instrument. Liam props himself up awkwardly on his elbows so that he can see Louis’s face, and it only takes a few moments before he starts to feel it in his abs. Louis’s brow is furrowed.

“Something’s not clicking,” he says, shaking his head. “The riff after the final chorus isn’t right.”

“You’re right,” Liam says. He’s not sure quite what the problem is, but there is one. It needs—”Is it too late in the song for a key change?” he asks. Louis spins around quickly and sets his fingers back on the keys, and Liam lets himself collapse back onto the sofa to listen. When they used to do this, it was always Liam at the piano. Louis is a better pianist than him now, though; Liam’s neglected it for so long.

It’s so easy to spend hours doing this, tweaking things because they need it and then tweaking them even more, just because they can. Pushing beyond this will be necessary, eventually, and the conversation they had over breakfast this morning is still weighing on Liam, but there’s something wonderfully familiar about this part. Every time Liam thinks about breaking the spell and diving into the real conversation they need to have, he gets stuck on how much he’s missed this, and he isn’t willing to push the moment again. Not yet.

He keeps putting it off until after lunch, because Louis decides to stay when Liam offers. They eat in Liam’s actual dining room, even though it’s just heated up leftovers from the refrigerator. The whole thing feels—it feels like things Liam’s scared to think about. Domestic. Familial.

Easy. All of this is so easy.

After, when they’re back in the living room and Louis is back at the piano, Liam steels his nerves.

“If I had phoned you, five years ago, and asked about writing together, what would you have said?” Liam asks. He’s lying flat on his back on the sofa, again, and he’s just been listening to Louis play the piano for a few minutes. Not even working on anything, really, because they’ve worn themselves out on writing and now Louis is just playing snippets of familiar melodies. 

It just came over Liam, the need to have the answer to this specific question. The others can keep. They’ll have time to get to them, it doesn’t all need to be addressed in one grueling afternoon.

Louis is quiet for far too long, his fingers still on the keys.

When he finally speaks, it isn’t a real answer. “I wasn’t in a good place,” he says. Liam bites his tongue, does not say _I rather guessed that when you stopped answering your messages and didn’t bother to come to my wedding_. He can just barely see that Louis shrugs one shoulder, a nervous tic. “Things were going badly with El for a long time before we finally called it quits,” he says. “I didn’t want to think about anything that might make me think about how things weren’t getting better.”

Liam’s stomach aches. He doesn’t know how to answer that, can’t think of anything to do but nod, which he doesn’t think Louis will be able to see. He doesn’t like thinking about it, not just because it’s this huge piece of Louis’s life that he missed completely, but also because he knows how bad it must’ve been for Louis.

After all, he was there the first time.

He’s spared the need to answer for another few moments when Louis sighs and keeps speaking. “Maybe it was presumptuous of me but I always thought that if we split up a second time, it wouldn’t be because of me, or us, just that she might get tired of dealing with all the shit she got from other people. And then it wasn’t that at all, it was just—we stopped fitting, somehow.”

“Louis,” Liam says softly, unsure where he intends the thought to go.

“I know,” Louis says. “It was stupid of me to forget that even people who don’t constantly get harassed online sometimes break up.”

If Louis weren’t still sat at the piano, Liam would hug him. “It’s not,” he says. “What I said earlier, about how I shouldn’t’ve married Becca at all, because it was rushed and not at all thought out, yeah? Well I was still surprised when we split up, even though looking back at it, it’s obvious that it was never going to work out long-term.” He sighs, and forces himself to keep speaking with measured words. “And then, after we did split up, I got really messed up in my head about how I wasn’t any good at keeping people in my life or making their lives better. I was convinced that I just made everyone around me miserable, eventually.”

“Liam,” Louis says, soft and low. It’s the same way Liam had just said his name, and it settles warm under Liam’s ribs.

“I know,” Liam says. He smiles, and he can tell it’s sad. “My parents and my sisters are still cross with me for avoiding all their messages.” He doesn’t know if Louis can see his face from where he’s sat. He can’t see Louis’s, can only try to read Louis’s emotions from the way he’s speaking.

“Is—are things better, now?” Louis asks. His voice is rough now, just a little, and Liam can tell from the tone of it that he’s not certain about asking this. That makes two of them uncertain about this conversation, then.

“Mostly,” Liam says, forcing himself to be honest. There’s no point in this conversation if he’s not going to be. Besides, it’s not like he won’t have to pour his soul out once they start writing for real.

“Good,” Louis says, more fervent than Liam expected. It makes Liam want to hug him, suddenly and with more intensity than he would’ve thought.

“What about you?” he asks, soft. “Are things better with you know?”

“I never said they were bad like that,” Louis says. “Just with El.” Liam can tell he’s got under his skin just the smallest bit, just at the insinuation that he knows something about Louis that Louis didn’t tell him explicitly. Louis’s always been prickly about that, and Liam’s always just pushed past it when he needed to. He remembers how giddy he felt, how powerful, when he realised that he could push past Louis’s instinctive resistance to get to know him better, and Louis would only play at being cross with him.

“You didn’t need to,” Liam says. He leaves the _I know you_ unsaid, because all it’ll do is irk Louis. 

Louis sighs, but he doesn’t argue. It’s almost a victory. “I suppose,” he says. “It’s been years. I’m used to it.”

Everything has seemed to be going so well, but half the time Liam still doesn’t know what to make of Louis at all. He set all this up, the reunion, and he asked Liam to work with him, and he’s here, playing Liam’s piano as the afternoon slides away, the day after he stayed the night in Liam’s guest room. But he also hasn’t asked for anything else, hasn’t pushed beyond this thing that’s starting to resemble friendship but somehow—isn’t quite that, either. Liam doesn’t know why Louis is here, really, or maybe more correctly why he’s here _now_. Why this didn’t happen five years ago or two years ago or next year, or any other time. 

Today’s not the day to ask. He has a whole tour to do that, and on top of that they’ll be working together after. Plenty of time. He’s dragged enough answers out of Louis for one day.

He’s not going to press on this one, try to eke out what Louis has got used to, if it’s the strange, uneasy feeling of aloneness after years of being partnered, or if it’s something more specific. That’s for another time.

Louis leaves before Lina gets home from school, offering to go in a way that feels sincere this time. Liam hugs him goodbye, clinging for longer than he would with just about anyone else. Louis’s face is pressed into the top of his shoulder, and Liam wonders if Louis is going to kiss him there again. But Louis was drunk last night, on excitement if not just on alcohol, and he doesn’t do it now.

Instead, he stays there for a moment that drags out long, his breath warm against Liam’s skin above his collar. Liam squeezes his arm around Louis’s back and just breathes, letting himself become accustomed to the smell of Louis’s skin and his hair tickling Liam’s nose faintly. He ought to take a step back, maybe say something about how Lina will be home soon. She’s a pretty sharp kid, she’ll have questions if she goes to school and comes home and Louis is still here. Liam doesn’t even know what he wants the answers to those questions to be, much less what they actually are. Louis still hasn’t let go of him.

They stay there, curled around each other, for another few breaths before Louis finally does take a step back. He leaves his hands on Liam’s hips when he does, and it reminds Liam of the club last night, swaying together not quite in time with the music. They’re swaying a little now, too, Louis leaning in so subtly that Liam is sure he’s imagining it until he’s sure he isn’t. But then Louis sways back away from him, and his fingers tighten on Liam’s hips.

Liam’s forgot how long it’s been since he breathed in. It can’t be too long, he’s not lightheaded yet. He sucks in air, ragged and disoriented. His eyes are dry, like he hasn’t been blinking. Louis is so close. He’s not as close as he was, but Liam thinks he can feel it when Louis exhales, long and slow. Like he took a deep breath. Like he feels unsteady too.

“Right,” Louis says. He blinks a few times, rapidly. Liam doesn’t, keeping his eyes fixed on Louis’s face. His mouth is open, just a little bit, and then he bites his lip. He hasn’t actually taken a step back yet, and Liam has to suck in another ragged breath.

“Lina will be home soon,” he says. It comes out hoarse, even though he’s not been doing anything that should have made him hoarse. He doesn’t think he’s physically capable of dragging his eyes away from where Louis’s teeth are digging into his lip.

Louis shakes his head, and then nods. Liam has the sudden, irrepressible thought that if he stepped forward and kissed Louis right now, Louis would let him. It makes his chest feel tight.

“She will,” Louis says. There’s a sadness to his voice that Liam can’t make sense of. He’d sounded like he was really ready to leave, and Liam thought he was ready for it as well, but now. Now—well. Liam’s back to wanting things that, even if he could have, he couldn’t have right now.

Even if he could have Louis in all the ways he wants, he can’t right now. Not with Lina home from school so soon. Not when he doesn’t know what Louis wants from what, what Louis expects from all of this. If they want the same things, in the abstract or in this specific instance.

“We’ve got a band rehearsal this week, right?” Liam asks instead of all the questions that are racing through his mind.

“We have,” Louis says. “A proper studio one, not just the four of us in someone’s house.”

Liam nods. It feels shaky, but maybe it doesn’t look shaky. “I’ll see you then,” he says. He hopes it doesn’t sound too much like a dismissal. Louis shrugs one shoulder, and he takes another step back, finally dropping his hands from Liam’s hips. Liam hates the loss of the touch, nonsensically feels cold just from not having Louis’s fingertips pressed against his t-shirt.

“See you then,” Louis says. His mouth quirks up into a fleeting smile, and then he turns around and opens the door. Liam doesn’t move for a long time after it’s slammed shut behind him, until he feels a little steadier. He can’t decide if he wants to try and make sense of what that moment meant or not. Maybe it would be easier not to, to just accept it as something that happened, that they’ll likely never talk about again. 

After all, it’s not the first time there was—a moment. It’s the first time one lasted that long, and it’s the first time Liam’s ever felt like it was more than a passing thought, but it’s not the first time. He tries to shake the memories out of his head unsuccessfully, and when he finally does move, it’s to sit back down at the piano. The half-formed lyrics in his head are too heavy in his mind for anything else.

When he emerges from the haze of chords and verses and rhyme schemes, it’s to the sound of Lina clattering through the door. She’s shrieking with laughter, and there’s another voice too. She’s brought a friend home with her from school, the two of them clearly giddy about something, and it means that Liam won’t be getting to spend his afternoon caught up in writing the way he did his morning. Instead, he’ll be making sure two excitable nine-year-olds actually finish their homework, and possibly figuring out something to feed them that won’t get him scorned by the rest of the parents. 

Before he stands up from the piano, he glances at his mobile that’s been sitting facedown on the top of it. There’s no messages from Louis, or from anyone else. He’s got a few emails, but nothing urgent. He could lock it again, shove it in his pocket and go handle Lina and her friend.

He doesn’t.

It’s cowardly, and Liam knows it’s cowardly as he does it, but sometimes it’s better to do something the cowardly way than to not do it at all. And besides, it’s hard to imagine he’ll be telling Louis anything he hasn’t already sussed out for himself.

At least, that’s what he tells himself when he types _i fancy blokes sometimes_ into a text message and sends it to Louis. He just hopes Louis won’t see it as Liam trying to press him for information if he’s not ready to give it. Liam just wants him to know. He sends a second message to say that, just _wanted you to kno_ with no further detail.

Louis doesn’t answer.

Liam stares at the black screen for a long time, and then goes to make sure Lina and her friend aren’t getting into any trouble.

—

Liam’s barely made it through the front door for their next rehearsal when he’s dragged into a corner. To say he’s startled would be an understatement, and it’s only once he realises that Louis is the one who’s squeezed them into a nook half-hidden behind a large potted plant that he manages to keep from swearing loudly. His heart is pounding, adrenaline spiked the way it used to when a fan would grab at him in a crowd. He opens his mouth to say something, to ask what the fuck Louis thinks he’s doing but—

“What was that about?” Louis asks in a hissed undertone, leaning in so close that he’s breathing in Liam’s face.

“What was _what_ all about?” Liam responds, failing to keep the snappishness out of his voice. He’s too startled by the way Louis grabbed him to not be on edge for at least a few minutes.

“You _know_ ,” Louis says, making a pained face. He waves one of his hands in a way that he seems to think could be considered expressive. 

Liam takes a stab in the semi-dark. “The texts I sent that you never answered?” 

Louis nods sharply.

“I should think it was obvious,” Liam says. It doesn’t feel like a good enough answer, but he’s been put on the spot for one, trapped in a corner with a clearly upset Louis. It’s the best he can do.

Louis shakes his head, frantic or maybe angry. Liam can’t tell. He can’t read Louis at all right now, and he’s stuck relying entirely on educated guesswork to pick out what Louis might be thinking.

“What did you mean by it?” he asks, and then, quick on the heels of that question: “Why didn’t you tell me before? Have you— _you know_? Why did you tell me now?”

It’s too many questions, all at once, and Liam doesn’t know which ones Louis really wants him to answer and which he’s just asking out of frantic, ill-advised curiosity.

“Er,” Liam says. His chest feels like it’s too small for his lungs, and he can’t catch his breath. Louis so close, and it’s so unlike a few days ago in Liam’s foyer when Liam thought—when he really, sincerely thought Louis might kiss him. 

They’re going to ruin their voices hissing at each other like this. They need to be ready to sing in just a few minutes. Liam doesn’t want to be having this conversation in a corner of a record label office, or in undertones and vague allusions and half-sentences. He wants to be able to say the things he means and to hear Louis say them in return, or not say them, or whatever the hell is going to happen. He doesn’t want to say these things right before a rehearsal, and he doesn’t want to say them when Louis is angry with him and he doesn’t—he doesn’t know what he wants, really. He knows what he doesn’t want, which is everything that’s happening now, but beyond that—he’s never done anything like this before.

“I didn’t really tell anyone,” he says, finally. “Before a few weeks ago, the only people who knew were Ruth and Nicola.” He doesn’t want to meet Louis’s eyes, doesn’t want to see what the emotion there is. “That’s why I didn’t tell you earlier.”

He can probably dodge the question that he suspects is Louis asking whether he’s ever shagged a bloke. He rather thinks Louis will feel guilty for asking that, later, and Liam doesn’t particularly want to tell him the answer right now. Not when he’s whisper-yelling at Liam in an alcove of an office. He doesn’t really want to answer the first one either, about what he meant by telling Louis, but at least he can shrug that one off, more or less.

“And then I just figured it was the right time to tell you,” he offers. Louis is still silent, his mouth set. 

“Why now?” Louis asks. It’s not quite an accusation, but it’s not exactly asked kindly, either. Liam can’t help thinking of Louis the other day, the way his hackles went up so obviously when Liam prodded at a sore spot Louis hadn’t intentionally revealed. It’s possible he underestimated how much of a sore spot this would be for Louis.

“Just felt like it,” Liam says. He’s not going to tell Louis that it was because of the moment where he thought Louis might kiss him, because if he was wrong, well, then he’s prodded at the sore spot and made incorrect assumptions and—Liam doesn’t think Louis would appreciate that. There’s a difference between your mate, conceptually, fancying blokes, and your mate fancying you. Especially for Louis, Liam suspects. Especially when it’s one of the band.

Still, even accounting for all that, being chewed out in a corner doesn’t exactly have Liam inclined to be forthcoming with all his reasons. He squeezes one of his hands into a fist, letting his nails dig into his palm, to resist the urge to crumble under Louis’s withering look.

Louis sighs, and then narrows his eyes. “Who else knows?” he asks. “You said that until a few weeks ago the only people who knew were Ruth and Nicola. Who’ve you told since then?”

“Alex,” Liam says. That one’s easy—it makes sense for him to have told Alex, and even if Louis prods for a reason, there’s a good one. He could stop there and just cave to the easy lie of omission. Louis will probably never find out; Harry can keep a secret. He swallows. “And Harry. Harry knows.”

“Why the hell does Harry know?” Louis asks, something in his voice that Liam almost, almost wants to let himself imagine is jealousy.

“We were talking,” Liam says, pathetic. “We talk about things. It just came up.”

Louis is clearly upset now, and angry, and Liam doesn’t really think he’s done anything wrong here, except for not telling Louis fifteen years ago, and he quite honestly doesn’t think this is what Louis wanted to hear about his bandmates 15 years ago. Liam can practically hear the tizzy it would’ve sent Louis into then, how much he would’ve fretted and panicked over what kind of rumours there would be. Liam wasn’t ready to tell people then, either, but the idea of being twenty-one and listening to Louis beg him to keep it a secret makes his stomach turn.

“Fine,” Louis snaps. “It’s not like I might want to know anything about my writing partner or my friend.”

He doesn’t say _Harry’s not your friend like I am_ or _how dare you tell anyone in the band before me_ but he doesn’t have to, not when Liam can see them clearly in the set of Louis’s jaw and the way his shoulders are hunching in, defensive and resentful. It’s the first thing Louis has said, or not said, in this whole absurd argument that’s made Liam want to shout.

“I’m allowed to talk to whomever I like,” Liam snaps. “I’ve known Harry as long as I’ve known you, and he at least he didn’t—” He stops himself short, sighing angrily instead of finishing the sentence.

“He didn’t _what_?” Louis hisses.

“He didn’t decide that he’d rather split up the whole band than actually talk to anyone about his problems.” Liam hates the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth, knows that he shouldn’t be laying the entire affair at Louis’s feet—even Harry hadn’t done that, and he’d had the opportunity when he told Liam about their row. It’s not like the rest of them weren’t keeping secrets back then, too.

But he’s said it already, hissed it into the too-small space between them. 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Louis says. Unlike the last time they were this close, his hands are stiff at his sides instead of gently resting on Liam’s hips. It’s such an odd thing for Liam to notice, right now, when he ought to be paying attention to literally anything else. Stupidly, ridiculously, Liam thinks that if he took a step forward, now, he could kiss Louis so easily. 

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, right? “Harry told me about the row the two of you had right before we decided on the break,” he says. He shrugs as he says it, too casual by half. He can’t bring himself to frame it kindly, even if it is the truth. His heart’s racing, blood pounding in his ears. He doesn’t want to smooth the words over. Standing here, watching Louis get more and more upset with him—it’s exhausting. Liam doesn’t want to do any more of it right now. He doesn’t want to offer up any more pieces of the raw, exposed truth.

When Liam sent the message, last week, he felt like he was revealing too much of himself. Like Louis would be able to read between the lines of what he was saying, would see the pieces of lingering, pathetic hope that Liam’s been unable to get out of his system instead of what he wanted it to be, just an offering of something of himself that he thinks Louis will take care of. And maybe Louis has, and maybe that’s why he’s angry. Maybe that’s the ragged edge that Liam’s got snagged on, or maybe it’s some other secret bruised piece of him that Liam’s stuck himself into. Maybe it doesn’t matter right now, if Louis is just going to be angry and Liam’s going to be angry in turn. 

He squares his shoulders. 

“We have a rehearsal to go to,” he says. “I’m not going to be late just because you want to have a go at me over not coming out to you on your schedule.”

“Fine,” Louis says, and then, “Fuck you.”

Liam walks away before he says something he regrets even more.

—

Liam goes straight to the practice room, only a few minutes late, but it’s a long time before Louis shows up. So long that he starts to worry that Louis isn’t going to come at all, that he’s just decided to fuck off and leave them all to muddle through it on their own.

Hard to think about that without thinking about Zayn, even if Liam tries not to. The way he just left, when he decided the band wasn’t worth it. When he decided they weren’t worth it anymore, never told them anything until he told them it was done. It isn’t helping that Harry and Niall are quiet too, obviously not sure what to make of it as the clock rolls to ten and then fifteen minutes past call time without Louis. 

“Liam,” Harry asks eventually, and if Liam hadn’t heard it on him before, maybe he wouldn’t be able to pick out the concern in his voice. “Do you know if there’s something going on with Louis? I thought I saw his car outside but maybe I was confused.”

Liam purses his lips, and stares at the floor for several moments too long to entirely avoid suspicion. “We had a bit of a tiff just now,” he says. “Suppose he might want a few minutes to cool off.” When he glances up, there’s an odd expression on Niall’s face. Liam can’t tell if it means he knows something he’s not saying, or entirely the opposite. He thinks, guiltily, of the things he’s promised to tell Niall and hasn’t convinced himself to do yet.

He won’t be able to avoid it for long if it all blows up in his face.

For his part, Harry nods a couple of times, his mouth twisting unhappily. He opens his mouth, Liam suspects to ask if things are alright, and then he closes it again without saying anything. Liam wants something to do with his hands, something to fix his eyes on other than the uncomfortable looks on Harry and Niall’s faces, but they’ve got a proper studio setup today with people to play their music for them, aside from the guitars Niall and Harry have wrangled for themselves.

It would be too obvious if Liam got his mobile out, so he just stares at the floor, unhappiness and anxiety curdling in his stomach.

Finally, the door opens and Louis steps through. “Sorry I held everyone up,” he says, and he sounds—well, he doesn’t sound cross, but he doesn’t sound like he’s much of anything else, either. If he’s upset and disguising it, he’s got better at it in the last fifteen years. Liam’s alright with that, to be honest. At least Louis is here now, so they can do their best to have a passable rehearsal, even if all he’s going to be doing for the whole of it is counting down the minutes.

Looking at Louis makes his chest ache. 

“It’s fine,” Harry says, and from the look on his face, maybe it mostly is. He looks a bit concerned, still, but not angry. It’ll really be too bad if Liam’s ruined this all after they made so much progress. At least Niall doesn’t have time to get into whatever it is that’s all over his face, not when they’ll already be starting nearly half an hour late. 

Despite the row and the searching looks that Liam can feel Harry and Niall giving both of them, the rehearsal is fine. Well, if you discount the part where he can tell Louis isn’t looking at him. It’s not anything to write home about, and they don’t make any great strides in terms of sorting the more complicated arrangements for backing each other’s solo songs, but it’s not a disaster. No one storms off or leaves in a huff or screams at each other. Well, at least not any more than happened beforehand.

Maybe they’ll be able to muddle through this, then. Maybe it won’t be like it was just last week, with him and Louis, but if neither of them is going to fuck off entirely then, somehow, this might be tenable. Maybe. Liam lets himself hope for it, because he’s not ready to give this all up again. 

Liam bolts the moment they’re done, though. He doesn’t want to have to answer any questions about what he and Louis fought about, or anything else, for that matter. He wants to go home, and sit pathetically, miserably on his sofa while he tries not to think about how they went from Louis swaying towards him like he was going to kiss Liam to Louis having a go at him in an alcove in an office about things that either Louis has blown completely out of proportion or that Liam completely misjudged.

He has to sit in his car and take deep breaths for a few minutes before he’s ready to drive home. He should’ve got a driver for this, but then, he had no way to anticipate that it would go quite this poorly.

Before he’s even turned the car on, his mobile buzzes with a call from Niall. Liam stares at it for a long moment, sighing, remembering the conversation he had with Niall where he as good as promised that he wouldn’t dodge Niall’s calls again, even if things got bad again.

Things feel pretty bad right now, and Liam swipes into the call anyway. At least he can feel good about that.

Still, as soon as the call connects, he says, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Liam,” Niall says, his voice flat and clearly annoyed. 

“I know,” Liam says. “I know.” He nearly adds that he picked up the phone anyway, because he thinks he deserves credit for that, but it isn’t the moment.

“Something has obviously happened and I don’t think it’s in any of our best interests for me and Harry to pretend that we haven’t got eyes or ears or brains.”

“I know,” Liam says, feeling like a broken record.

Niall sighs, rough across the phone speakers. “I don’t want to force you to tell me things but I also don’t want to go forever not knowing what the fuck is going on with my band.”

Liam slumps forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees. “I want to tell you,” he says softly. His voice breaks anyway. “Just, like, next week maybe. Not today.”

There’s several long moments of silence before Niall says anything else, and the words are careful when he finally does speak—slowly spoken and clearly thought over. “If I ask a few questions that aren’t about the details, will you tell me?” Liam hates the way it makes his stomach churn, but he also hates the way that Niall is clearly so worried about this. Worried enough to ring before they’re even home. But at least he isn’t just giving up.

“Yeah,” Liam says. His voice barely shakes. Maybe Niall won’t be able to hear it over the connection.

But then, Niall’s voice shakes a little too when he asks, “Do I need to be upset with Louis? Or with you?”

“No,” Liam mutters, resentful of his own honesty. He doesn’t think he did anything particularly wrong, but then—there’s pieces of Louis that he guards jealously, the pieces of himself and his life that people have spent decades now trying to twist to fit their own ideas, and, well, maybe a text message wasn’t the best, either.

“Alright, Niall says. He pauses, sucking in a breath that Liam can hear. “Is this going to turn into a problem for all of us? Do I need to be ready for this tour to be called off?”

“I don’t think so,” he says. “No.” Saying it helps, somehow. He’s not going to let this be the end, even if things don’t keep slipping back into place quite as easily as they had seemed to be. Even if things are hard, after this. It’s what Niall and Harry deserve from him, if nothing else. He’ll be a professional.

Or maybe this is just another fight that they need to have out and they’ll get past it. Maybe Louis is just angry that Liam didn’t tell him sooner and he’ll get past it when he realises that, really, that’s kind of an arsehole thing to be angry about. It wouldn’t exactly be the first time something like that happened. Liam’s just got unused to it, the same way he’s not used to the fights anymore, doesn’t have the certainty that they’ll come through on the other side and still be friends. Still fit together in that weird, perfect, almost telepathic way they had sometimes.

“Promise?” Niall asks, sounding almost as ripped open as Liam feels. 

“Promise,” Liam says.

Now he’s just got to keep it.

—

Liam’s even more wrung out by the time that Lina is put to bed that night, from his own day and then hearing about the bad day she had and letting her cry with her face buried in his shoulder. Still, he finds himself back in the spare bedroom, his fingers resting on the plastic keyboard keys. The volume’s turned down almost as low as it’ll go, and Liam lets himself play through familiar snippets of melodies for a few minutes while he lets his mind settle. A few One Direction songs, a few of the things he did solo. Other pop songs, a few of the classical tunes he learned when he was a boy. It’s soothing, almost mindless.

It gives a chance to mull over the song he came in here to work on, the one he feels like he needs to get out of his head and onto—well, probably just onto a recording on his phone and then nowhere else. He doesn’t write for himself, not anymore.

He might not be writing for anyone else either, as it turns out.

Thinking about that makes his chest hurt and it’s hard to breathe for a moment. He isn’t going to think about that tonight. It’ll work out or it won’t and regardless it’s not going to be solved the same night they fought. When Louis would barely look at him after, not that Liam was looking at him much either.

He came in here to work on the first song he’s felt like writing in more years than he cares to consider, and that’s what he’s going to do. There’s a few notes about potential lyrics in his phone— _we ended with a whimper not a bang_ — _maybe we went to bed angry one too many times_ —and he finds himself wishing he had a piece of paper. Some things are easier with a pencil in hand.

Liam plays a few chords of the song, the bit he thinks is going to become the chorus—it’s got a kind of wistful melancholy to it that he thinks is the right mood. Then he gives in and goes to the kitchen for some scraps of paper. If he’s doing this, he’s going to do it properly. He gets a glass of water while he’s there, and he eyes the refrigerator. He’s got a few beers in there, for when there’s company, and the memory of writing and drinking at the same time is bone-deep.

They wrote a lot in the dark hours of the night, after shows, after parties, after after-parties. One last beer loose in the hand, tossing lyrics back and forth at each other until the sun came up or someone fell asleep. But writing and drinking alone in your own spare bedroom isn’t the same as doing it with a friend. Or whatever Louis is to him now. Liam doesn’t want to put it into words, not yet. 

Lyrics first, then words, if he can find them.

He shuffles back to the bedroom with his paper and his glass of water and a stale bag of crisps he found in the back of the cupboard. 

Liam’d been thinking, as he planned to pick writing back up for real, as he tossed around the idea of writing a song for himself again, that he could find a place to put a functional enough studio in this house. There’s plenty of rooms, sacrificing one would be no hardship, and if he got it soundproofed it could be closer to the kids’ bedrooms without issue. It’s strange to think about that now, when he’s got no idea what’s going to happen with Louis and writing. He’s already told Alex about the plans, tentative as they are—were. It doesn’t seem like Liam ought to be clinging to them right now, not after today.

Just last week he’d been thinking that maybe he would play some of this for Louis, let Louis fiddle around with the lyrics while Liam tried out new strains of the melody. Writing’s easier with someone else to bounce the ideas off. Probably won’t be doing that now, especially as the lines running through his mind feel more and more like they might be _about_ Louis. 

Thinking of Louis gets him thinking of all the phenomenally stupid rows they had back in the band. At least once a month, and usually more, if he’s remembering correctly. This one, well, at least it’s not one of those. Liam doesn’t like it, doesn’t want to think about the hurt and anger and discomfort on Louis’s face today, but at least he thinks it’s a fight worth having. 

It’s not—well, it’s not the time that Liam got upset with Louis because he thought Louis had said something rude about his sisters, and then instead of checking, he’d just ignored Louis for three days. And it’s not the time that Louis had _actually_ said something rude about Liam and then refused to apologise because he claimed it was a joke. Or the time Louis got upset when Liam had said something that he’d thought was a snide comment about his voice, except that wasn’t what Liam had meant at all but he couldn’t get Louis to listen to him long enough to actually hear that. 

And then, of course, that had somehow spun into one of the worst fights, at least after they learned to get on. Liam’d finally got Louis to listen to him long enough to say that he hadn’t meant it like that all, except then he’d said that he knew it was a sore point for Louis, and Louis had just absolutely blown up at him. It had been a litany of “I don’t know what you mean by that” and insisting that Liam had no idea what he was on about.

It had been early enough that Liam hadn’t really trusted they’d emerge from it on the other side. Early enough that Louis hadn’t trusted Liam’s intentions yet. Hadn’t trusted Liam, maybe. 

Eventually, with a better understanding of Louis and their relationship, Liam had been able to pick out why it had made Louis go off like that—giving name to a piece of him that he thought he was holding secret and private. At the time, Liam’d been completely adrift and terrified. At least this time isn’t quite that bad.

Not that the fighting had stopped then. Even later, even over the writing they did together and loved, they’d had the most ridiculous rows. Sometimes it seems like a miracle they were ever on speaking terms at all, the way they’d butt heads over everything, but then after, inevitably, one of them would ask the other for a kickabout or a night at the pub or go to go a gig and it wasn’t an apology, but then, not everything needs to be said with words. They were always good at saying things in other ways. 

Liam’s been married twice, and he’s had plenty of other serious relationships. He’s got his sisters and his mum and dad and friends he’s known for ages, and he doesn’t think he’s ever met anyone where they could just understand each other the way he and Louis do. Did. Do?

It’s hard to think about.

They always managed to work it out before, but this feels different. And it’s not a long-term project this time. They have a tour to get through, but nothing after that. They could vanish from each other’s lives again.

Liam can’t think about that tonight, not if he’s going to do anything but sit miserably still and fret about whether everything’s ruined all over again. He came in here to write, even if a bedroom with a keyboard shoved in the corner isn’t actually a great space for writing. There’s nowhere for Liam to put his paper down now that he’s got it, and he ends up trying to write over the keyboard speaker, awkward and uneven but still better than nothing. With a few layers of paper it’s not so bad.

He scribbles down some of the words he’s got saved in his notes app, scratches them out and tries another version. 

_We went to bed angry once too often_  
_Or did we stay up too many times and fight?_

_Maybe if I’d found some better words_  
_You would have stayed the night_

That’s—he thinks he likes that. Liam can’t help wanting another opinion on it, wanting Louis to look over the lyrics and tell him that they fit together, but he can’t do that tonight. Or maybe ever.

He pushes past the feeling, takes more of the thoughts from his notes and reframes them.

_Didn’t we deserve better than this?_  
_We ended with a whimper not a bang_

The sky’s starting to turn light again by the time that Liam has the whole thing written out and recorded sloppily on his phone. The angles were all wrong for getting a good sound, and the recording is tinny, even before accounting for how Liam was whisper-singing over the near-silent keyboard. But it’s a start, a sound to go with the pages of scratched out attempts at lyrics.

Written at the bottom of the final paper, with only a few words scratched out and replaced, is what Liam thinks will be the final verse and outro.

_What if we’d fought to be together_  
_Instead of fighting to fall apart_  
_Is it possible you didn’t see_  
_You were the one holding my heart_  
_I never could find the words to say_  
_The words that would have made you stay_

Maybe this song is never going to go anywhere, maybe he’ll never feel like showing it to anyone because it’s too raw, but—at at least he wrote it. At least it exists.


	3. over fire and water

The night before the first rehearsal after his fight with Louis, Liam spends hours lying in his bed staring at the faint shadows on his ceiling. There’s a night light down the hall, the faintest glimmer from Lina’s toilet that’s somehow just enough to leave pale lines across his ceiling.

When he was in the band, sleeping in hotels every night, the shadows moved as cars drove by and flashing advertisements on buildings changed. There were distant door slams and sometimes, depending on the hotel, Liam could even pick out the sound of the elevator dinging. By comparison, his own house seems too still and too quiet, depriving him of the distractions he thought he wouldn’t ever miss again.

Of course, when he was in those hotels, there was always someone he could talk to. Even if he had to wait until morning, always reluctant to wake anyone up even though he never resented it much when they did it to him, there would be someone who would look at him and ask him if he slept well, pat his shoulder or his back when he said he didn’t, maybe let him doze against their shoulder on the way to the venue or the interview or whatever it was they had planned that day.

A few times, when he felt truly awful, one of the others would kick up a fuss and get him a day alone to rest. It was usually Louis.

And then there’s the fact that he was less likely to be tired in the morning from sleeplessness and more likely to be wiped out from having stayed up too late with the lads. With Louis, mostly, and most likely they’d stayed up too late writing. Sometimes it was a club, but they typically lasted longer on the nights they wrote, not drinking as much or as quickly and far more motivated to stay awake even as the hours pushed later.

The last time he and Louis wrote together back in the band was nothing special. In all honesty, that’s what’s haunted Liam most about it. If it had been fantastic, or even if it had been one of the times that ended with them at each other’s throats, well, at least it would’ve felt significant.

Instead, it had just been—uninspiring.

That they were so tired by then was part of it, Liam is certain. Wrung out, and they’d just poured a lot of themselves into the fifth album, and they were trying to pull new ideas out of their brains. Liam remembers feeling defeated, like he had used up all his ideas and no more good ones were going to come. Louis had seemed out of sorts as well, and Liam remembers that at the time he put it down to exhaustion, but looking back he can’t help wondering if it was something else. The row he had with Harry, maybe, or the knowledge that they needed a real break settling into his bones the way it was into Liam’s. 

They’d accomplished a bit, enough to call it a writing session, but Liam hadn’t felt particularly good about any of it. He didn’t think Louis did either, given how unenthusiastic he seemed about it. They didn’t get caught up in it the way they usually did, tossing fragments of lyrics and melodies back and forth at each other until the sun was peeking over the horizon and then dragging themselves to their beds, knowing that the miserable morning in only a few hours would be worth it. 

Liam didn’t think it would be worth it this time, the promise of a few extra scraps of sleep more appealing to him than the prospect of having the bones of a song to show for their sleepless hours.

When Louis had said, “Maybe we should just call it a night,” Liam hadn’t argued.

In hindsight, he almost wishes he had. He doesn’t think more exhausted hours of trying to wring ideas out of their minds would have accomplished much, not really, but even a fight might’ve been a better thing to show for their last ever night of writing together in the band. At least a fight would’ve made it clear they still cared enough to fight, instead of—nothing.

Liam doesn’t remember if they managed to create anything at all, even the barest scraps of an idea that might’ve been refined later. Mostly, he remembers wanting to cry after he crawled into his bed, the hotel sheets crisp and familiarly unfamiliar around him. That’s the feeling he’d been thinking about when the conversation about a real hiatus had come up. The exhausted look on Louis’s face, beat-down and strung out and like he didn’t have anything left to give. Liam hadn’t even hugged him good night, too upset and worried to do anything but take himself straight to his room, leaving Louis to deal with the empty glasses and bags of crisps in his own room.

There’s a lot of things he regrets from the later years of the band, but the way that night ended has risen back to the top recently. Maybe if he’d just pushed himself a little more, got them through the barest minimum of creation, or even if he’d just been honest with Louis about wanting to sleep and given him a hug and the reassurance he was sure, even then, that Louis wanted—

But then, if Louis was already in a state and trying to hide it, that might’ve just made things worse. Maybe there wasn’t a way Liam could’ve turned that night into a good memory.

The thing about the hiatus was that it really had been mutual, or at least Liam had been certain at the time that it was. He’d had his concerns, of course, but at the time the need for rest, for a real break with no new album or tour or anything else marked down for the moment it ended, was so urgent that he pushed through them. He was run so ragged.

They had a meeting to decide it, the four of them sat on the floor cross-legged the way they had when they were kids on the X-Factor just trying to fumble their way through the process without messing anything up too badly. It was things like this, so familiar and yet not at all the same, that always made Zayn’s absence stand out the most to Liam, and he remembers with surprising clarity the urge to comment on it, and how he’d pushed that urge away.

He thought he was grown up, then, because of how much more mature he was than when he was sixteen. God, he’d had no idea.

What’s gone blurry with time in his memory is which of them actually said the words first. He knows they all agreed on it, after it was proposed. It may have been Louis, but then it may have been Harry, or even Niall. What stands out to Liam now, thinking back on it, is the roiling mix of emotions that had settled deep in his stomach, churning and uncomfortable. He was relieved that someone else had said it, so he didn’t have to, and guilty that he was relieved. Scared about what might come next. Worried about what it would mean for the band, worried that any of them who didn’t really want a break might have said yes just to not be the only one saying no. Tired. So, so tired.

They’d all hugged, after the vote was done.

“If we don’t give a specific timeframe then people will think we’re just talking around splitting up for good,” Louis had said. 

Liam remembers so clearly, like it’s a movie playing out behind his eyes, the way Niall had shrugged. “Say eighteen months, then,” he’d said, and Harry had nodded, and that had been that. Niall had reached out first, tugging Louis closer by the back of his shirt, and then Liam had just—gone. Piled in on top of them, the way it had taken him so long to get used to years before. Harry had been the last to join in, but he had, and Liam remembers the smell of his cologne and the tickle of his hair when he’d tucked his head up against Liam’s neck.

He remembers savouring that hug, the first one that felt like an official winding-down. The way all their touches had lingered after, not quite going back to their own personal spaces even though they’d all more or less grown out of being on top of each other constantly. 

Louis especially, he can pick out now from his memories even though it hadn’t felt important at the time. Louis barely stopped touching Liam for the whole rest of the day, his fingers dragging across Liam’s arm when they walked past each other, his hand brushing Liam’s leg when they sat next to each other. That night, he’d fallen asleep in front of the telly with his head tucked into the crook of Liam’s neck, his breathing going steady and slow. Liam had let him sleep there for far too long, resisting the urge to press a kiss into his hair and telling himself he wasn’t memorising the smell of Louis’s shampoo, the soft feeling of his slightly damp hair, the warmth of his skin.

Oddly, maybe unintuitively, that night is a better memory than the last time he wrote with Louis. Not good, necessarily, or untarnished by the passage of time. But it was something that felt earnest, a time when Liam thought they were all on the same page. He’d been aware, even at the time, that some of his comfort in Louis’s presence was not fully platonic. Still, he mostly just remembers the whole thing as a relief. The knowledge of a real break, and Louis’s continued tactile presence, and the sense that they all still understood each other in some fundamental way that he’s never been able to explain properly. 

It was only in the years after, when Liam had plenty of time to pick over every single piece of what happened, that he wondered if it was significant that they hadn’t even tried to write anything once the hiatus was announced. After all, it wasn’t like all the writing they did was purposefully for the band. Plenty of it was just the two of them playing around, creating things just because they could. That was why he’d been so certain that they’d be able to keep working together, even during the hiatus. It hadn’t been only about the band for ages, by then.

Of course, Liam knows more now than he did then, not just about what was coming when they pressed pause on the band the details of the moment. He knows that Harry and Louis had a massive fight not long before that conversation, that it was still raw enough that years later Harry remembers it as something significant, something that stands out from all the other fights. He knows what happens with Louis’s family, and how that’s going to change everything.

It’s a lot to think about it, and he wishes he had Louis to talk through it all with.

And then his alarm goes off, the trilling music startling from his thoughts but at least indicating that he doesn’t have to lie to himself that he’s going to get any more sleep tonight.

—

Liam’s still feeling a bit bleary by the time he gets to the rehearsal, and he drags his feet the whole way there. He stops for coffee, and then lingers in the car park drinking it as the call time inches closer. If he’s late—he’s definitely going to be late—then he can blame it on the coffee, which he can in turn blame on his drooping eyes.

If he’s honest with himself, though, he’s just dreading it. He doesn’t know what, if anything, Louis has told Niall and Harry about their row. He doesn’t know how much Louis has read between the lines of what Liam said to him. He doesn’t know what Louis is going to be like, if he’ll be in one of his petulant, sour moods or if he’ll be overly cheerful and bouncing off the walls, desperate to hide even the slightest hint of unhappiness. Both options make Liam feel like he can’t breathe.

All he’s heard from Louis since the row is a few curt text messages, sent in response to a text from Liam that flirted with asking about their writing plans. He hadn’t wanted to send it, really, but every time he thought about having already told Alex he felt a sinking sense of professional obligation, so he’d done it.

Louis’s response, delayed by hours, said _Our agents can work out the details_. He’d followed it up with, _Assuming we’re still planning to do it_.

Liam takes a few moments to swallow past the lump in his throat at the memory. It still makes his stomach curdle, sour with hurt and resentment and frustration.

But he goes inside anyway, coffee cup sweating onto his hand in the uncomfortably warm summer day as he gets out of his car. The condensation drips onto the floor of the lobby as he stands there for half a minute, pouring as much of the drink into his mouth as he can before he tosses it in a recycling bin. It won’t be allowed in the practice room anyhow, and he ought to be drinking water. 

Everyone else is already there, and for maybe the first time since they started this reunion Liam feels distinctly like the odd one out. There’s been times before this where he’s felt that they’re all at odds with each other, or not quite on the same page, but this is—this is him opening the door to the practice room to see the three other lads huddled together, knees almost touching. There’s other people around the edges of the room, but Harry and Niall and Louis are whispering so softly that there’s no way they can hear. Liam can’t either, actually, and they stop as he steps into the room anyway.

“Sorry I’m late,” he mumbles. Harry shrugs, and Niall smiles, making a dismissive hand gesture. Louis barely glances at him.

“Might as well get down to business, now we’re all here,” he says, pushing his chair back from where it’s nestled in close to Harry and Niall. 

“Suppose so,” Niall says. He stands up too, going to find a guitar, and Harry does the same. Liam stands frozen in the doorway for a moment longer, and then he forces himself to move into the room. Staying there like an idiot isn’t going to make anything better. The best he can do right now is act like a professional and see where things go from there. Right now he’s here to sing, and if things can be sorted out with Louis later, well, that’s for later.

They start running through the version of the setlist they’re working with right now, but they only make it through the first two songs before Louis interrupts with some notes. Liam wants to chime in, agreeing with the idea but taking it in a different direction, but he holds back. Instead, it turns into Harry and Louis bickering about how the transitions ought to go but it’s a kind of good-natured bickering that Liam hasn’t seen from them since well before the band ended. 

He sits silently, not meeting anyone’s eyes even though he can feel Niall watching him after a few moments. There’s no way he’s getting out of today, or at least out of this week, without Niall grilling him again.

Liam owes him the truth, he thinks.

And then Harry and Louis are done arguing and they’re diving into the next chunk of the setlist. Liam’s not even certain what the resolution was, if there was one at all. They move on to the next song, and Liam lets himself sink into it, familiar notes and harmonies enough to get him out of his head for a few minutes.

The long break before this rehearsal, before they ramp up to the final stage of pre-tour preparation, was because Louis had a scheduled trip to LA, and Liam’s been unable to get out of his mind what a long time it felt like. Louis’s gone to LA quite a few times since they started preparing for the tour, but this was his longest visit and it felt even longer because he didn’t send Liam a single picture of Freddie, or the beach, or his own miserable sunburn after going to the beach with Freddie.

It hurts more because Liam had allowed himself to imagine, for a half a moment, that he could’ve gone with Louis on one of those visits.

Louis has been gone for nearly the whole two weeks since Liam saw him at their last rehearsal, and in all honesty Liam spent the better part of the time tangled up in his own head, with Lina on holiday with her mum and Bear spending his summer holidays with his friends as much as possible. 

Liam likes to think he wasn’t quite that unbearable at 13.

He could have texted Louis about it, perhaps, but Louis wouldn’t have laughed at him, and then commiserated about the downsides of having a teenager. “And you’ll have two soon,” he would have said, if he had been saying anything to Liam that wasn’t “talk to my agent,” and Liam would have groaned dramatically, more about not wanting to think about Lina growing up than about anything else.

He’s always melancholy in the summers when neither of his kids is around. It gets lonely, is all.

At least now he’s got this rehearsal to pull him back out of his thoughts for the morning. He’d imagined that after this session he might ask Louis to come over for a late lunch or a lazy writing session, but instead—well, he won’t be doing that. Maybe he’ll have a nap instead, just to while the day away.

The song is over, and so is Niall’s run-through of his loosely outlined talk break, and Liam ought to be paying attention again.

On the whole, it’s not a great rehearsal. Liam can’t manage to get his head into it, distracted in turns by reminiscing about the past and by watching Louis. The set of his shoulders and his jaw, the way he still rests his hand on his stomach when he sings, the line of his back, of which Liam has a clear view because Louis is turning toward him as seldom as he can get away with.

They only make it through about half the version of the setlist they’re currently working from, which Liam tries not to be too upset about. There’s no point in it, not when they have plenty of time. Besides, he’s got lunch with Alex to look forward to after, purposefully scheduled so that he won’t have to go back to his empty house.

It’s only a few more days until Lina’s back from her holiday, at least.

Niall gives Liam a pointed look as they all leave, and Liam ignores him even though it gnaws at his stomach. He’s going to have to deal with that sooner than later; the band can hold together with two of them in a fight, but beyond that he’s not so certain. And furthermore, he doesn’t want to be in a fight with Niall.

He’s late to lunch, with even less reason than he had to be late to rehearsal, and Alex shakes her head at him when he finally meets her at the table. 

“How’s everything going?” she asks, a wry twist to her voice. Liam’s going to have to explain himself, then. He shouldn’t have spent so many years being on time, then no one would notice him being a bit late now. That opportunity is long gone now, and he’s firmly set as a person who doesn’t make a habit of being late.

“It’s going well enough,” he says, the kind of thing that’s both true and a lie. Today wasn’t bad, even if it was tense and even if it could have gone better. If they can’t sort things out, it’s just going to be that way from now on, and Liam will have to learn to be okay with it.

It’s not like it’s the first time that things have been tense and imperfect; so many of the last weeks and months of the band were. They’ll get through this, just like they got through that, and then maybe it’ll just be the end for good. A few weeks ago, Liam wouldn’t have been pleased about that, and he isn’t entirely certain he’s pleased about it now but it being an option is comforting. If his text to Louis and the row following it ruined this all, he can just go back to the life he had before and that will suit him just fine.

Alex raises one eyebrow at his brief response. “How was the rehearsal today?” she asks, and there’s a pointedness to it that Liam wishes he could resent.

“It was fine,” he says. It’s closer to muttering than he’s proud of. “Not the best we’ve had but we’ll get past it.” He even manages a smile, which feels like a real feat given how tense the entire session was. Alex smiles back at him, thin but more sincere than Liam’s was. He’s not going to be able to walk this line of half-truths forever.

“Any more details about this new writing gig you’re picking up?” she asks, back to being all business, and Liam feels himself completely fail to keep his face neutral. This was meant as a business lunch, to work out some of the details of how his life will be managed while he’s on his first tour in years, but he knows Alex won’t hesitate to derail them if it seems like something else is going on. Liam doesn’t know that he’s ready to get into it yet.

He hasn’t managed to put into words just what’s been happening in his mind over the last few weeks, the hopes he assembled from scraps of the past and present and which then exploded in his face. The patio of a moderately trendy new restaurant doesn’t feel like the right place, but then, he has to tell her eventually. Not like she needs to be wasting her time planning for it.

He shrugs, aiming for casual but certain he’s missing it by a wide margin. “Looks like that might not work out,” he says, and then he takes an excessively large bite of his salad so that he won’t have to say anything else for a few moments, no matter how many skeptical eyebrows Alex raises at him.

“Oh?” she says, setting her fork down on the side of her plate. It’s almost unnerving how much she reminds Liam of his last therapist when she does that, the way they both learned how easy it is to draw him out with that trick. He ought to be better at not giving into it by now, but every time he has to struggle against the urge to elaborate.

He chews his salad very slowly and deliberately. Alex gives him a look, and then picks up her glass and takes a long sip.

Liam, inevitably, crumbles.

“We had a bit of a row,” he says, pitching his voice low. There’s plenty of other conversations around them, one of the perks of having a business lunch at such a busy place, but he can’t help worrying someone will overhear. He’s not such a hot commodity these days, except that with the reunion there has been the occasional photographer lurking outside his house, and a few more interview requests than usual. Still, even all these years later, it feels like a bit of a treat to be able to have a private conversation in public.

Alex’s gaze turns sad, for just a moment, and she looks like maybe she doesn’t know what to say. “Do you want to tell me about it?” she asks, her voice level but in a way that makes it clear that she’s working to keep it that way.

Liam presses his mouth into a line. “In all honesty? Not really.” She shakes her head, but the corner of her mouth is turned up. Liam looks at her, the familiar set of her shoulders and the careful way she’s looking at him. “I think I should anyway,” he says.

It feels better than he expected it to.

Alex raises an eyebrow at him, curious but wary. “Oh?” she says, exactly the way that’s always so effective at drawing Liam out. 

Liam breathes in slowly. “I told Louis about—” he pauses, glancing around them. “The thing I told you a little while back,” he finished. Alex gives him a knowing look, and he nods once. “I thought, well.” He’s stumbling over his words, unable to find a way to articulate it that won’t have him saying far more than he’s comfortable with, but somehow, she seems to understand what he’s getting at, based on the storm look on her face.

“And it didn’t go well?” she says, her voice level in a way that doesn’t suit the look on her face at all. Liam shakes his head, and Alex’s scowl deepens.

“Not like that,” Liam says, fully aware how unconvincing it’s going to sound, under the circumstances. But something in Alex’s face shifts, curiosity mingling with the anger. Liam makes a vague hand gesture, not certain what he’s trying to convey. “It’s all—band history stuff.” 

“Ah,” Alex says. She doesn’t press, and for not the first time these months, Liam’s grateful for all the things he doesn’t have to explain to her.

Liam presses his lips together for a moment. “I texted him about the writing last week and he answered with something about our agents needing to sort it out, so I don’t think it’s a priority right this moment.” Alex nods and Liam resists the urge to rub his hands across his face. “We can see what happens with the rest of rehearsals and the tour, I suppose.”

Alex nods, sharp and professional, but she reaches across the table to pat his hand a couple of times as well. She doesn’t say out loud the reminder that she’s Liam’s friend and she’s on his side, but he doesn’t need her to. He just needs her to be there, and right now he needs the distraction of business.

Liam’s put off increasing security measures for too long as it is, but Alex is clearly inclined to be gentle with him after what he told her because she doesn’t rake him over the coals for it too much. Just a little bit, and without that it would have felt too much like she was pitying him. And they do, in fact, get it all sorted. So far, there’s been nothing of concern involving Lina or Bear; they plan out some options if something does happen, but Liam’s glad to let them just carry on as usual for now. 

Still, he can feel the assessment behind the looks Alex keeps shooting him, and there’s a clear thread of caution underlying her words. Liam doesn’t know if she’s on eggshells because of what he told her or because she’s got more concerns than she’s letting on about the security because she doesn’t want to unsettle him too much. Maybe it’s something else entirely.

He suspects it’s that he fought with Louis.

Liam’s not given her every gory detail of his relationship with Louis, even now, but she’s sharp, and she’s been paying close attention to him for a long time. She knows exactly what a shift occurred in him when he started working with the band again, and then after he and Louis started writing together.

The look on her face when he gave her the rough outline of what happened lingers with him for the rest of the day. Unpleasant as it is, it’s better than how he remembers feeling when he was truly retreating into himself, creating a life for himself that wasn’t expansive and joyous and filled with people and activities he loves. He thought he was going to get to have that life again, that he’d got himself past the part where every attempt at it ended catastrophically, but maybe that was just a false hope.

He doesn’t want to lose what he’s gained over the last few months, but he also doesn’t want to patch over the spot by giving Louis an apology that he doesn’t feel. That won’t do any good at all, that much he knows from hard experience.

Maybe the next rehearsal will be an opportunity to make some progress. Liam tells himself that until he’s almost convinced himself to believe it, at least enough that he can close his eyes and actually sleep.

—

It’s not until after his lunch with Alex that Liam finally forces himself to look back over his lyrics. He’d thought about it a few times while Louis was away but the idea of reimmersing himself in it turned his stomach. Somehow, now, he’s just surprised they don’t feel angry.

They feel wistful, shot through with the feeling of missing something he never had to begin with. He has to sit down for a moment, the sheets held loose in his hand, and think over everything happening in his head as he wrote them. There’s a rough recording on his phone that he could listen to, but he doesn’t think he can bring himself to play it back and hear his own voice, thin and tinny and exhausted, pushing through these words. Perhaps it’s best to just shove the papers into a drawer in his office and leave them for a while, until he feels like he can use them.

Somehow, he doesn’t think he’s going to do that. He’s already spent so long fiddling with the lyrics, and he isn’t ready to set the project aside yet, especially when he doesn’t have anything else to focus his energies on. On the whole, working on a song that’s at best transparently inspired by how he felt about Louis is perhaps not the best distraction from thinking about Louis, but it’s at least the kind of consuming activity that lets him drown out everything else.

Liam’s only made it a few bars into the loose version of the music he’s attempting to scribble down from his tinny recording when he’s interrupted by his mobile buzzing loudly against the table. It’s a text message, which isn’t terribly surprising since it’s late afternoon, and it’s from Zayn, which startles Liam quite a bit.

It’s not the first time he and Zayn have texted each other in the last months, but every time it’s like being slapped across the face by his youth. Liam thinks it’s a good thing, and he’s glad to have something tentatively good, or at least not bad, with Zayn, but it takes him a moment to convince himself to read it. The few weeks he spent being asked to ferry unpleasant messages between Zayn and Louis left a mark, even though he never actually did it, and even though it was so long ago Liam thinks he should’ve forgot it entirely. 

That whole period of time was strange, and stands out in Liam’s memory for it. The frantic rehearsals, squeezed in between the already frantic concert schedule, the uncertainty, the unsettling loneliness even when he was surrounded by people, like something was missing. Because something was missing.

The text is nothing special, the kind of thing that people send to their old friends they haven’t spoken to in a while and want to check in with. Liam suspects it’ll turn into the type of conversation that ends with them both saying they should catch up sometime, and then never doing it, and he’s surprisingly okay with that. The rawness has mostly been smoothed over, and there’s a closeness they’ll never be able to have again, but this isn’t so bad. Stings a little more now that Liam’s managed something like what they used to have with the rest of the lads—barring Louis—but it’s okay.

He’s going to answer the message, because he likes this version of his life better than the one with only his family and his kids and Alex to talk to. It’s good, having people who text him to check in, even if things aren’t perfect. Some of what he wants is better than nothing.

His response isn’t much less generic than the initial message, just a couple of quick updates, a question about what Zayn’s working on these days. Liam can’t quite bring himself to regret that Zayn ducked out of the full reunion tour—it’s tense now, of course, but it would’ve been so much more tense the whole time, and they would have had to leave off the last album and, well. Some things are just for the best.

Liam sets his mobile facedown to look at the sheet of lyrics again, scratching a few lines out and rewriting them without making any changes. He’s better at this when he can do it out loud, say the lines to someone else and have them repeated back. Alone, he just mutters the same words over and over, never quite managing to pinpoint the things that need to be changed.

There’s a bit he thinks could work as a chorus, and some other bits that seem to fit in with it, but there’s other parts that don’t quite mesh. There’s something about this song that isn’t quite clicking in his head.

He can’t tell what it’s missing, and he can’t stop himself squinting down at the words.

 _No one’s ever been like you_  
_No one’s ever made me feel like you_  
_Made me laugh, made me cry_  
_Made me yell, made me lie_

_Couldn’t have imagined you_  
_Couldn’t have predicted you_  
_Couldn’t have planned for you_  
_You shook me up so bad_  
_You shook me up so good_

There’s something in there that could be a chorus, but there’s also a whole other piece of what he’s written that doesn’t seem to quite click.

_What if we’d fought to be together_  
_Instead of fighting to fall apart_  
_Is it possible you didn’t see_  
_You were the one holding my heart_

_I never could find the words to say_  
_The words that would have made you stay_

Maybe it ought to be two songs instead of just one.

He wishes Louis were there, to give his opinion on it. He’d be almost too ruthless, pick Liam’s lyrics apart in the places they were clunky and then put them back together, saying the things Liam meant for them to say all along but with the words flowing together perfectly. It always made Liam chafe a little, watching Louis do that so seemingly effortlessly, but then at the end of it they’d have a better song. When he heard the songs on the radio, he never thought about Louis’s pen scratching out his lyrics and making them better, he just thought about how the things he and Louis were able to create together turned out so well.

Liam scribbles more words down on the paper. They’ll fit in somewhere, he’ll have to figure out how, but they feel important.

_Could we have found a way to work it out?_  
_Or was it truly doomed even from the start?_  
_Could I have loved you for my whole life?_

When he glances at his mobile again, Zayn’s messaged him back. Liam didn’t expect that so quickly, but now that it’s in front of him he thinks perhaps he should have. He knows what it looks like when someone is trying, especially one of them.

He knows what it looks like when they’re not trying, too.

It would have been lying, even at the time, for Liam to say he was surprised when Eleanor broke things off with Louis the first time. Liam’s not an idiot, and he could see the tension in the set of Louis’s shoulders when they spoke, the decreasing frequency of the calls. How often Louis wanted to go out with Liam, and the edge of desperation to the requests. Mostly, Liam had humored them, even though he could feel the late nights wearing him down.

Louis never said anything about it, of course, and Liam never did either because he knew that would only end poorly. Liam doesn’t know how much Louis knew he guessed, or if he thought he was being subtle with the endless nights out and the clinginess and the short temper. He likes to think that Louis was aware of how well Liam knew him, by then, but then—he rather thinks that Louis didn’t think about those things so much.

Back then, Liam didn’t let himself hope the way he had now, but the idea was still there, fluttering anxiously in the back of his mind. Louis turning to him for comfort, wanting the support and stability Liam knew he could provide. 

There had been one time, before Louis and El officially officially called it quits but, well, Liam knew it wasn’t going well, and even if he hadn’t before that night, it would’ve been obvious when he saw how Louis was acting with girls at the club he dragged Liam to. He didn’t do anything, not actually, but Liam knew him well enough to know this wasn’t his normal behaviour, either. It left a sour taste in Liam’s mouth, and it made him sad, the way he could see the unhappiness practically hanging in the air around Louis.

He remembers, with surprising clarity given how much he’d been drinking, that he’d gone to find Louis at the bar, and made up some excuse for why he wanted to leave. He hadn’t wanted to watch it anymore, and he hadn’t wanted to sit alone drinking, either. So he’d just gone to fetch Louis, mumbled some absolute rubbish about being knackered, and Louis had let Liam tug him out the back door and into a car back to their hotel. Liam’s memories are fuzzier after that, as he’d grown drowsy without the press and clamour of the club. Louis had pressed up against him in the back of their car, his leg resting fully against Liam’s, and he’d tucked his head onto Liam’s shoulder.

Liam was drowsing, his head resting against the window of the car, and to this day he thinks he heard Louis whisper “thank you” against his skin. When he turned, Louis was either sleeping or feigning it convincingly, and Liam hadn’t the heart to nudge him back awake before they got to the hotel. Instead, he spent the rest of the ride listening to the faint music from the driver’s radio and trying to figure out what on earth Louis could have meant. 

Whether or not Louis was asleep when Liam checked, he was by the time they got to the hotel, and Liam felt bad prodding him awake. Louis, clearly only half-awake, draped himself against Liam as they went inside, his feet dragging to the point that he stumbled a few times. Liam curled an arm around his back, awake enough and sober enough to keep them both upright until they made it to his room.

His was closer to the elevator, and he didn’t feel like wrestling Louis any farther than necessary. They stumbled through the door towards the bed, the same as more nights than Liam can count, and Louis collapsed onto it immediately. He was asleep by the time Liam came back from brushing his teeth and changing into his pyjama bottoms, mouth open slightly and snoring softly. Liam crawled into the bed next to him, and fell asleep almost instantly.

None of that’s the part that stands out. What stands out is how he woke up, partway, in the darkest part of the night, for just long enough to realise that Louis was awake, propped up on his elbow with his fingertips resting on the bare skin of Liam’s arm. It was too dark for Liam to know whether Louis was watching him, and as soon as he’d realised, he’d kept his eyes mostly shut, not wanting to disturb the moment of—something. He hadn’t wanted to try and name it then, and he doesn’t now either.

He doesn’t think it was a dream, and even if he never let himself believe that it meant anything, the existence of that moment in Liam’s memory feels important. 

_Can’t imagine my life without you_ , Liam scribbles onto the paper. 

Tomorrow, he’ll listen to the recording he made and see where to fit the new lyrics in.

—

Liam’s mobile goes three times in quick succession after the next rehearsal, which was no better than the one two days earlier. The picture that flashes on the screen is an old one, so old it feels like it was from another lifetime. Niall’s hair is blond, and his face is young and clear. Liam’s seen it about a thousand times over the last few months but for some reason, this time feels different.

He taps the screen once to send the _driving, call you when I’m home_ autoreply, and then he flips the phone facedown and cranks the radio up as loud as he can bear. He needs to try and sort his head out for a few minutes before he actually talks to Niall about—well, about what the hell just happened in that rehearsal.

In a way, it was like the old days when they were willing to be at each other’s throats a lot more frequently. Well, Niall never was, but the rest of them were more than happy to scream at each other from time to time. There’s been so little of that since they started this reunion business, and it would be lying to say Liam hadn’t noticed it before and almost, kind of missed it. Not the screaming, really, but the security that they’d be alright afterward, that he could say anything short of outright cruelty and they’d work it out.

This hadn’t felt like that at all, is the thing. That’s probably why Niall’s been ringing him like mad, because he knows as well as the rest of them that today’s fight wasn’t even really a fight. It was all tense shoulders and cut off sentences and Liam and Louis still barely being able to look at each other. That’s not them, or at least it shouldn’t be them, not if they want this to work.

Before today, Liam’d tossed the idea around in his head a few times, that someone might suggest they let this become more than just a reunion tour. Things were going well enough, even considering what happened with Louis, and if everyone else was on board, well. He certainly wouldn’t have said no outright. But if Niall’s concerned now, if it was truly bad enough to put everyone on edge, then perhaps that ship has sailed.

It takes Liam a few minutes to work up the courage to tap the call button on Niall’s contact after he’s home. He tells himself it’s so that he can compose himself, let the last bits of his anger dissipate, but he knows he’s just at war with the instinct to be cowardly.

He didn’t have that urge when he was young, not the way he does now. Liam misses that part of himself, never quite reckless by nature but certainly more able to leap at chances. He didn’t feel paralysed then. Scared, certainly, and often overwhelmed, and plenty anxious, but not this horrible paralysis, making every action unbearably difficult.

Pretending his hand isn’t shaking, Liam presses call and listens to the rings before Niall picks up. He doesn’t let himself hope that Niall won’t answer, because he’s not going to be that kind of coward. Even if he can’t fix this with Louis, he isn’t going to let things get ruined with Niall again.

Niall’s voice is soft when he answers, though not devoid of the tension Liam suspected would be there.

“Hi, Liam,” he says, and Liam tries to ignore the way his own voice cracks when he says hi back.

“Today was bad,” Niall says, and Liam wishes they were in the same room so that he could just nod, not have to put his agreement into words.

But then, he doesn’t know if he could have this conversation while looking Niall in the eye. Not now, when it’s all wrapped up in the present instead of just a remnant of a distant past that he can almost laugh about. It was different with Alex and with Harry, when it was something from his youth, far away and not—whatever it is now. Whatever happened, whatever hopes Liam built up in his head that Louis seemed like perhaps he shared and then changed his mind about. Or had never shared at all. Liam doesn’t know and he doesn’t know if he wants to know or if the answer would just hurt more.

“It was,” Liam says. He’s struggling to find the words he needs to finish the thought, to express what actually happened that’s left him and Louis in such a state. It’s rather complicated by the part of it all where he’s got no idea what’s going on in Louis’s head.

He’s got some guesses, but the trouble with Louis is that guesses are such a fraught thing.

“You and Lou don’t fight like this,” Niall says. He sounds sad, and the guilt of it sits heavy in Liam’s stomach. They don’t, except they are now. “I thought it would blow over after a week or two.”

“So did I,” Liam says. “I don’t want to fight with him forever.” He steels himself before he says the next bit, because of course it would be easy, if he didn’t want to be fighting, to just smooth it over, except—“But I don’t want to just paper over it and act like he didn’t do anything wrong, either.”

Niall sighs, a rough static noise down the phone, and Liam does too. “You told me I didn’t need to be upset with him,” Niall says.

“You don’t,” Liam insists. Maybe he should just come out with it, spit the words out before he can get too caught up in his own head about it. “I understand why he got upset when I told him that I fancy lads sometimes in a text message but I’m not going to apologise for it either.”

“Liam,” Niall says, a surprised noise that might be a laugh in his throat. “You told him over text?”

Liam’s yes is sheepish. “I know I shouldn’t have,” he mutters. “But it’s not always the easiest thing to say, especially when—” This part’s harder, squeezing the words out of his throat when there isn’t an easy lede like he got from Harry.

He never told anyone else, not explicitly. Ruth guessed, and told Nicola her guess, and Liam never denied it, but he never said it out loud to them, never turned the quiet teenage yearning into real words that mean something in the world. Telling Harry was different, a memory of his youth as opposed to a thing that’s curling painfully around his heart in the present.

“Especially when what, Liam?” Niall asks, gentle but prodding nonetheless. “Don’t leave me hanging here, mate.”

Liam laughs despite himself. Somehow, that makes it easier. “Especially when you’re telling the person you fancy,” he says, and the words are clear and even. He thought he wouldn’t be able to do it except as a garbled, hurried mutter, and he’s managed to say it like an adult. That’s something. He can feel good about that, even if he feels good about very little else of this.

“Oh,” Niall says, on a soft exhale. “Oh, Liam.”

“I know,” Liam says. “I’ve made a right mess of it all.”

“I’m reserving judgement until you tell me the rest,” Niall says. “What happened after you texted him?”

Liam groans. “Nothing at all, until he pulled me aside right before our rehearsal and had a go at me for—well, to be honest I’m still not sure what it was for. He was upset I hadn’t told him, was part of it, but it felt like there was more.” He pauses, considering, but there’s no reason to not be honest with Niall now. “I wonder if he suspected I fancy him, and that’s what set him off.”

“Could be,” Niall says. It sounds so measured that Liam doesn’t know what to make of it at all. “He shouldn’t’ve, though.”

“I know that,” Liam says. He can hear the defensiveness in his own voice. “S’why I don’t want to apologise, even if I probably oughtn’t have told him like that.”

Despite his certainty about his position on apologising, it’s a relief when Niall takes his side, agreeing that Liam shouldn’t apologise even if he could’ve been more thoughtful about the message. “Thanks,” Liam murmurs as Niall mutters about Louis blowing things out of proportion, his tendency for dramatics even when a gentler touch is called for.

“He’ll probably get over it,” Niall says. “You know how he is.”

Liam’s mouth twitches, wry, and he wishes Niall could see his face and he could just let that expression speak for itself. “This doesn’t feel like a regular fight.”

He wishes he could see Niall’s face, see if he’s nodding or shaking his head, read the little changes in his expressions. Maybe there’s something about this that Niall will be able to recognise or solve, even though Liam’s missed it completely.

“Suppose not,” Niall says, slow and contemplative. “But you two have always managed to make these things work out in the end.” 

He’s not wrong, but he wasn’t there for all the years of missed and ignored and eventually abandoned messages and scheduled phone calls. They did sort those out, somewhat, eventually, to become whatever it is they had before this happened, but this doesn’t feel like much of a solution, as it turns out.

“‘M afraid this might be the time that finally breaks it,” Liam says. 

Niall is quiet for a moment that drags out long enough for Liam to become truly terrified that Niall will agree with him, that this isn’t just his own learned pessimism about relationships speaking. “I don’t want to not be able to be his friend,” Liam says, and then, fully aware of how miserable and pathetic he sounds, “I don’t want to stop being any of your friends.”

“You won’t,” Niall says, and his voice is warm. “If all those stupid rows the two of you had for the first year of the band didn’t ruin things for all of us, then this won’t either.”

Liam wishes he could believe that, but those were, well. They were stupid, and this isn’t stupid, and he cares too much to let it go the way he eventually learned to with those.

It’s the caring that’s the problem. Things would be easier if they were able to just be colleagues, lads who’d been in a band once and were giving it a go again for old times’ sake, instead of—this. ‘Course, Liam doesn’t think the band would’ve worked at all if they’d approached it that way. He can’t imagine going through the things they did, the intensity of the schedule and the fans and the sheer amount of time they spent together and just feeling like they were people who worked together. They’d been so young, and they’d not had anyone else to lean on like they’d had each other, and of course it wasn’t always easy but it was _them_. 

Niall understands that, at least. Not many people do.

Like he can sense Liam’s skepticism down the phone, Niall clears his throat and elaborates. “What I mean is, everything feels fragile now, but it was fragile then and the two of you biting each other’s heads off four times a day didn’t destroy us, so I don’t think we’re going to let one fight do it now.”

Liam wants to curl up against him so that his protest that it was different then, when they didn’t have a choice, will be muffled against Niall’s shoulder instead of voiced aloud into the silence of his kitchen. That’s not an option, and he manages to say it anyway despite the curdling fear that he’s digging out pieces of himself that weren’t meant to be seen by anyone, not even Niall. 

“Of course we had a choice, Liam,” Niall says, his voice going all wise and fatherly in that way he’s got that he’s better at than any of them, despite not having any children. “It wouldn’t have been an easy choice, but there was always the choice to just walk away from the competition and the band.” He breathes out through his nose, slow and with a shade of emotion Liam’s not used to getting from him. “Zayn did it, in the end. Any of us who decided that the band wasn’t worth it could have, even while we were still on the show.” 

It’s possible that’s not entirely true, that there was some kind of contract that Liam doesn’t remember all the details of, but Niall’s got a point nonetheless.

“Besides,” Niall says gently, “If we all thought it was doomed we never would’ve put ourselves through that.” He pauses for just a moment, and then continues. “I suppose I can’t speak for Harry and Zayn, but if I’d thought that you and Lou fighting nonstop was never going to be resolved I don’t think I’d have stuck around to watch. There was always something—I dunno how to explain it. I knew that you’d get past it.”

Liam takes a deep breath and lets himself wallow in the optimism of it all. “Thanks, Nialler,” he says. His voice is rougher than he thought it would be. It feels almost reckless to let himself think that maybe it’s not ruined, that maybe he can fix _this_ the same way he fixed so many other things with Louis, with a careful amount of prodding and patience and an arguably stupid willingness to put up with his petulance. 

“‘Course,” Niall says. “I’ll talk to him and see if I can nudge him toward being less of a prat.” 

Despite himself, Liam laughs, and Niall joins him for a few heartbeats, before he goes quiet again, and then clears his throat.

“There’s something I haven’t told you either,” he says, and something about it makes Liam’s stomach sink. There’s no good reason for it, except he’s not used to Niall keeping secrets from him—from them. From everyone else, yes, but not from them.

“Yeah?” Liam says, hoping Niall can’t feel the fear in it. He almost certainly can.

“Yeah,” Niall says. His voice is even and unapologetic. “I met someone a while back. Before we even started the reunion stuff, and I’ve barely told anyone, and—I dunno. I feel like I ought to have told you lads ages ago.”

Liam nods, and then hums because, of course, Niall can’t hear that. “It’s your life,” he says. “You get to decide what we know and when.”

“Course,” Niall says, but he sounds regretful nonetheless. “But it’s nice to share things with people, too.”

Distantly, even though it really wasn’t so long ago, Liam remembers Niall letting slip something that implied he had a—someone. “It is,” Liam says. “You said something, back in the spring. It made me think that maybe you had met someone, but I didn’t ask about it because I figured you’d tell us if you wanted us to know.” 

“I couldn’t figure out how to bring it up,” Niall says. “And then I wasn’t sure if it was something I should be sharing at all, because we were keeping it so private. Still are.” 

“There’s a difference between private and secret.” Liam finds himself wishing for the phones of his childhood, the kind hooked to the wall with long curled cords you could fiddle with while you spoke to someone. Instead, he’s flicking his earbud case open and closed and open again, hoping the click isn’t audible down the phone. 

“There is,” Niall says. “I think maybe I went too far into secret with this one.”

Liam hums again. “I think maybe I did too.” He exhales slowly. “It was easier, back when everything was completely mad in the band and then I just—never stopped keeping it that way.” 

“We should have had this conversation in person,” Niall says. His voice is just the slightest bit rough, and Liam wants to hug him. “Could give you a hug then.”

“I’d have liked that,” Liam says, ignoring the roughness in his own voice. “I’ll be honest though, might not have managed to say it if I had to look you in the eye.”

“Liam,” Niall says, all gentle and wheedling. “I’d have got it out of you, you know that.”

“Hardly anyone else ever managed it,” Liam points out. “Even the ones I told I like blokes, none of them ever guessed ‘cept my sisters. Harry only knows cause I told him outright, and that was like it was something that ended.” 

Niall makes a considering noise. “None of them know you and Lou the way I do, though. Not even Harry.”

Liam can’t argue with that. There’s pieces of him that are tangled up forever with all the lads, but it’s no secret that they all share more pieces of themselves with some than others. No one ever claimed it was an even distribution of any of them.

“Fair point,” he says, trying to keep his tone light even as he thinks about the tentative texts he exchanged with Zayn a few days ago, the careful way they’ve prodded at the thread that links them, frayed but not entirely severed. Maybe he’ll tell Niall about that, not today but soon. They’ve covered enough of the heavy things left between them today. 

Niall hums, pleased, maybe smug. 

“You should tell me about her,” Liam says. “Or him. Or whoever, I suppose.”

He can practically hear the way Niall smiles down the phone. “We didn’t tell anyone for ages because she’s, you know, she’s got a normal life and I didn’t want to blow it up until we knew it would work.”

Liam smiles, helpless. Niall’s voice has gone all soft and he sounds extremely happy.

“Yeah?” he says. “But it is working?”

“It is,” Niall says. “Her name’s Aine and she’s a schoolteacher in Dublin.” Liam makes an encouraging noise, and Niall continues for a couple of minutes. They met when a friend of Niall’s introduced them, and she grew up in a tiny town in Ireland that Liam swears he’ll have heard of and Niall swears he won’t—he hasn’t—and she’s divorced with two kids. 

This makes Liam exclaim with delight, and Niall just laughs. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t see that one coming for myself,” he says. “But that’s alright, you know? Would be boring if you could just anticipate everything that happened in your life.” 

“True,” Liam says. He knows Niall’s right, but he’s always been the kind of person to try and plan out all the possible twists and turns his life could take. He’s been taken by surprise plenty despite that, though. But it’s comforting to have the options there in his head to flip through. “More of an adventure when there’s some surprises.”

“Exactly,” Niall says, and then silence falls for a moment. Liam’s trying to think of what he ought to say to hang up, since they’ve already been talking for so long, but he can’t quite bring himself to do.

“Hey, Liam,” Niall says, breaking a silence that Liam’s been considering ending by making an excuse to hang up. “Thanks for telling me about the stuff with Louis. Er, and especially about the other stuff.”

Liam makes a low noise, one that’s meant to sound pleased but otherwise not too expressive. “Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” he says, and Niall makes the noise he makes when he waves his hand dismissively.

“‘S’ the kind of thing you should tell people on your own schedule,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not upset.”

“Thanks,” Liam says softly. “And thanks for telling me about Aine. When do I get to meet her?”

Niall laughs and hangs up on him, but three minutes later Liam’s got a text that says _love you_ and something settles in his stomach, comfortable and certain.

—

Liam hears the key turn in the lock and the front door swing open. It scrapes lightly against the wood where it’s shifted since it was hung, then there’s the louder sound of footsteps, and Louis’s voice yelling, “I’m home!” The sofa is comfortable, but it’s been two weeks since Liam saw him, so he pushes himself upright and pads softly into the entryway.

Louis’s suitcase is sitting in the doorway as he wrestles with a backpack and a jacket— _isn’t it summer?_ Liam thinks, but the thought passes—and when Louis sees him he drops them both on the floor and steps toward him, smiling.

“Hi,” Louis says, and Liam smiles back at him, and then Louis stepping even closer and leaning in to kiss him. It’s soft and quick, and Liam wasn’t expecting it at all but at the same time he isn’t surprised. If anything, he’s leaning into it automatically, opening his mouth slightly against Louis’s to drag it out. Louis lets the kiss linger a few seconds longer before he takes a half-step back. “It’s nice to see you,” he says.

“You too,” Liam says. He leans in for another quick kiss. “How was your trip?”

Louis’s smile goes a bit lopsided. “Too short,” he says. “But I’m glad to be home, too.” He glances around him. “Are we alone?”

Liam nods, feeling a smile crack his face.

“Fantastic,” Louis says, and then he hauls his suitcase in the rest of the way and pushes the door shut. As soon as it clicks, he pulls Liam into another kiss, this one deeper and headier than before. He kisses Liam like he’s done this a hundred times before, or a thousand, movements that feel familiar against Liam’s mouth even if a nagging piece of his mind says they shouldn’t. 

Louis walks him back out of the entryway, grabbing at Liam’s hips when he stumbles over a bag of Bear’s that’s been left out on the floor. They’re still kissing, short, breathy kisses over and over and over. Between them, Liam manages to say, “I’m glad you’re home, too,” and Louis laughs.

“I could tell,” he says, but the laughter is softened by the way he reaches for Liam’s hand, squeezing it gently. Liam feels selfish, briefly, for how glad he is to have Louis back. Louis always says he wishes he could stay longer in LA, and meanwhile Liam’s got both his kids here in London, and he’s so pleased to have Louis back as well—

“Hey,” Louis says, catching Liam out for letting his mind wander. “Don’t do that. You know I love you. You know I wouldn’t have stayed longer even if I wasn’t coming home to you.”

Liam nods, and tips his head forward to rest his forehead against Louis’s. “I know,” he murmurs. Louis leans up to kiss him. “I love you too,” Liam says, but it’s swallowed by Louis keeping their mouths pressed together. Not that it matters; Louis knows.

“Now,” Louis says, pulling back just a breath. “We won’t be alone for long, so I think you should give me the welcome I deserve.”

“Of course,” Liam says, but he’s already leaning back in to kiss Louis, harder this time. Louis kisses back with clear intent, his hand that isn’t still curled through Liam’s sliding around Liam’s back and resting at the top of his jeans. He pushes at the waistband, and Liam shakes his head. “Not here,” he says. “If we leave our trousers on the floor of the hall we’ll never live it down.”

“Fine,” Louis says. “But hurry up, then, I’ve been waiting for this since I got on the airplane in LA.”

Liam doesn’t know how they got to his bedroom, but it feels like they’re there immediately. Louis’s lost his shirt, and Liam sees it tossed on the floor just inside the door. On the wall, there’s a picture of the two of them hanging, and it doesn’t feel familiar. Neither does the easy way Louis collapses backward onto the bed, propped up on his elbows, giving Liam an expectant look. “It’s rude to keep a bloke waiting,” Louis says. Liam slows his hands on the flies of his jeans, undoing the button as slowly as he can.

Louis, meanwhile, is already squirming out of his joggers and flinging them across the room. “You’re a monster,” he says. Liam laughs, delighted.

He can see the line of Louis’s cock through his pants, already hard, and then Louis reaches down to palm himself and Liam closes his eyes to steady himself.

When he opens them, what he sees is the hazy dark of his bedroom, the familiar and faint outlines of his wardrobe and dresser and the crack of light around the door to the corridor. Christ.

He’s alone, of course. Not just in his room, as usual, but in his house. Lina’s coming back from her extended stay with her mum today, but for now it’s just him and the distant nighttime noises of the house.

Liam allows himself the luxury of a dramatic sigh as he collapses back onto the bed, now that he’s certain he’s not about to crawl onto his bed with a mostly-naked Louis. Now that he’s remembered that he’s barely speaking to Louis, much less anything else. 

It’s been a long time since he had a dream like that, and if it had been about someone else maybe he could’ve just had a wank in the shower and got it out of mind. But it was Louis, and everything’s such a muddle now that Liam doesn’t think he can do it. Hell, he couldn’t even before this new mess. He tried it out a few times with Louis, years ago, when he was still wrapping his head around the idea, but it made him feel so odd that, ultimately, it wasn’t very helpful.

But god, the dream-memory of Louis stretched out across his bed still feels so clear in his mind. The shape of his body, the curve of his cock through his pants making Liam’s mouth water despite the simmering anger that’s back now that he’s not caught up in the dream. The intense familiarity of it all, how Liam in his dream knew they’d done this countless times and would do it countless more.

At least being alone means that he can have a lie-in and pretend to wrestle with the idea for a while before he inevitably gives in and gets himself off.

—

It comes as a surprise to everyone, most of all Liam himself, when he finally has enough of Louis’s useless tetchy sulking. Some of it’s that he’s grown tetchy and sulky himself, and the last two and a half hours of attempting to figure out staging while Louis refuses to look him in the eye hasn’t helped at all. It’s not that Liam expected it to be easy, trying to imagine how something’s going to look on a whole stage in a packed arena rather than sketched out in a windowless rehearsal room with the four of them and a couple of choreographers and producers, but he thought at least they’d all manage to be on the same page.

They were meant to be done in 90 minutes and now, pushing past two and a half hours and without a break to eat, Liam’s starting to feel it.

Still, he’s surprised when he hears himself yell “Oh, will you at least fucking _look_ at me?” across the room, after Louis just openly ignores one of Liam’s suggestions.

Every head in the room whirls to look at him, and Liam can feel his ears going red.

It did work, though. Louis is definitely looking at him now, his jaw set and his face unreadable. Everyone else is looking at him too, but Louis’s gaze feels the most important. 

“Is that what you want?” he asks, his voice low and unlike anything Liam’s ever heard from him. He can’t parse it at all, if it’s angry or frightened or some emotion of Louis’s that Liam’s never been faced with before. 

“For starters,” Liam says, a helpless truth. Stupidly, impossibly, it reminds him what Louis said about the concert they did months ago. A reunion gig, for starters. With the possibility of more.

“Right,” Louis says. “For starters.”

The silence around them is deafening, the weight of everyone’s eyes as they wait to see what’s going to happen. Liam’s hyperaware of every other person in the room, not just their eyes flicking between him and Louis but how close they are to him, the room suddenly oppressively small for all these people. There’s so much tension in that air that feels suffocating, like Liam can barely suck in enough air to fill his lungs.

Louis is just staring at him. There’s colour in his cheeks, and he’s breathing more heavily than Liam would expect for someone who’s just stood there, not doing anything. Not even singing anymore. 

And then Louis is moving, crossing the room toward Liam in a few strides that Liam watches like they’re in slow motion, like Louis is pushing through water instead of moving, actually quite quickly, through the air of the room. When he reaches Liam he stands there for a moment, his chin tilted up almost defiantly, and then he shrugs— _fuck it_ , Liam reads clearly in his body language—grabs Liam by the head, and pulls him down to kiss him.

Liam sucks in air sharply, ineffective as that is with Louis’s mouth pressed to his, and doesn’t manage to move at all for a few seconds at least. He’s not actually certain how much time passes with Louis’s mouth sealed against his and Liam just standing stock still, unable to get his brain to connect to his body to actually react in any way. He doesn’t think this is another dream; he doesn’t think he would dream about this, about Louis just—doing this. Grabbing him and kissing him in the middle of a rehearsal, in front of Harry and Niall and producers and choreographers and anyone who might open a door in the entire building. 

That’s the thought that gets Liam to uproot himself, taking a step back from Louis. It takes some effort, because Louis’s grip on his head is firm, but Liam manages it. There’s a space between them now, and when he looks at Louis, his cheeks are even more flushed than they were before. Liam’s are too, he’s certain, and he can tell he’s breathing heavily.

“What the fuck, Louis?” he says. It sounds angrier than he meant it to, when what he’s actually feeling is mostly helpless confusion. But then, somehow Louis took everything that’s happened between them over the last months, everything there was between them over literally decades of friendship, and what he did was kiss Liam angrily in the middle of a rehearsal. What the fuck feels like a pretty apt reaction.

Louis shrugs again, that same little gesture that Liam knows means he wants people to think that he doesn’t care about something that he actually cares about a great deal. He usually finds it kind of endearing, a quirk of Louis’s often-prickly exterior that Liam feels it’s a privilege to be able to see through. Right now, though, it’s infuriating. “Oh, come _on_ ,” he says, and Louis takes a step forward.

Liam takes a step back.

Louis closes his eyes for a moment, and Liam thinks that maybe the fight’s gone out of him. “I’m not going to do that again,” he says. 

Someone else in the room clears their throat, and Liam and Louis both startle.

“Think maybe we ought to leave you two alone for a few,” Niall says, his voice strained even as he’s clearly aiming for light and casual. Harry’s got a look on his face that it’s been years since Liam’s seen, uncomfortable and uncertain and anxious.

Liam doesn’t know if he wants to be left alone with Louis right now, but he’s not going to force the others to stay while whatever’s going to happen here happens. So there’s a minute and a half, maybe, of miserable tense silence while everyone else grabs their mobiles and wallets and whatever else. Someone mumbles something about a smoke break. The door falls shut behind Niall as he leaves, the last person to do so. Before he left, he gave both of them a look that felt somewhere between anguished and furious.

“Right,” Liam says, because maybe the fight’s gone out of Louis, some, but he’s still upset. “What the fuck was that about?”

At least Louis doesn’t shrug again. He does prickle a little, clearly getting his hackles up, and he gives Liam a withering look. “I should think it was obvious,” he says, and Liam feels the sudden, visceral urge to hiss at him.

“It is most certainly not obvious,” he says instead, the words coming out harsh. “You yell at me for telling you I fancy blokes, you ignore me for weeks, you won’t even look at me, and then out of nowhere you up and kiss me? That’s messed up, Louis.” 

He hoped, before he said it all, that after he did Louis would look sheepish. Instead, he’s clearly hit up against one of Louis’s prickly spots, because he looks angry again. “Sorry,” Louis says, not sounding it at all. “What reaction would you have preferred? Should I have kissed you right after you told me? Or did you not want me to do that at all? You never even gave me a real answer about why you told me in the first place. Am I really meant to believe you just felt like it, after the way you were looking at me right before you texted me? You fucking texting me a weird hint about what was going on in your head, which I’ll be honest I haven’t been able to make sense of in years, anyway, not since you stopped fucking talking to me.”

Liam was working up to something, a similar tirade except about how he has to deal in hints because he doesn’t want to make assumptions, but the last bit stops him in his tracks, the words frozen on his tongue. He splutters, for a moment, a few half-formed words escaping him before he manages anything coherent.

“You think I have any fucking idea what’s going on in _your_ head?” he says. Yells, really, the words only not echoing because the room is designed to muffle them. “You think I’ve ever been able to figure you out? I don’t know why you wanted to do this reunion in the first place, and I don’t know what you want from me except to pick up where we left off five years ago, or maybe where we left off in 2015 and we can just pretend nothing’s changed. Fuck, Louis, I don’t know what you wanted from me back then either.”

Louis’s arms are crossed, and he looks like he might actually stomp his foot on the floor. Liam’s not sure he’s ever seen Louis this angry with him. This angry, of course, more times than he can count. But never with him.

“Maybe,” Louis starts to say, clearly so angry he’s struggling to form words. Liam feels rather the same. “Maybe I just wanted to be your fucking friend again and this seemed like the best way to do it.”

Liam’s not sure he believes that. It's such a small thing, such a little reason to do all of this. To drag all of them back together, to put together a charity show and organise a tour and disrupt all their lives. 

“Is that what we were?” Liam asks, all the anger boiling under his skin somehow settling into something eerily calm. “Were we friends? Because sometimes it didn’t feel like that.”

He’s needling now, intentionally prodding at things he knows Louis will be sensitive about. Now that Liam’s got him angry, he wants to see how much more he can get out of him. What else Louis’s been holding in that, maybe, Liam should have known all along. He’s so desperate to get as much as he can from Louis that he doesn’t even particularly mind the listing off all the things he’s done wrong. He knew about those already.

Right now, he’s thinking about that night fifteen years ago when he woke, bleary and still half-drunk, and Louis was looking at him like something precious and irreplaceable and—how something in him had snapped, at that moment, the last piece of him that had kept him from being completely overwhelmed by how much he loved Louis. The last straw had been the barest hint that Louis might feel the same way, that he might have the same emotions churning in his mind, the same confusing tension between what he wanted and what he thought he could have.

And then everything just crumbled, after the band ended. There was a strange period, where Liam thought it would really be temporary, but things just kept falling apart and apart and apart and the idea of it got harder and more complicated, and then, suddenly, it was too late.

“We were friends,” Louis says, hurt threading in obviously under the anger. “You were my best friend. I thought you were my best friend, was that not what we fucking were? Were you just hanging out with me because there wasn’t anyone else, or—fuck, what did you think was happening?”

Liam shakes his head, and realises almost immediately it was the wrong thing to do.

A few steps away from him, Louis mutters, “Oh, fuck you, then.”

“No,” Liam says, frantic. “Not that—obviously we were friends, that’s not—fuck.” 

“Please consider using actual words to saying whatever the fuck it is that you’re getting at,” Louis mutters, and Liam resists the urge to actually throttle him, or to just tell him to go fuck himself and leave the room and never come back.

“What I meant was—fuck, Louis,” Liam says. When it comes down to it, the words are still hard to find, each one squeezed out of him, sharp and raw and a little painful. “What I meant was that I thought, maybe, that I wasn’t the only one who wondered about what if we _weren’t_ friends. I didn’t really think so, back in the band, but these last few months made me wonder.”

“Wonder _what_?” Louis snaps. “Please just say what you actually fucking mean, I can’t deal with this.”

Liam considers leaving the room instead, or just hedging until Louis does, or literally anything but spitting the words out, somehow caught in his throat even after he managed to say them to Harry and Niall. Louis is staring him down, eyes narrow and cheeks flushed and his lips still red like he’d just been kissed. Because he had just been kissed.

“If maybe I wasn’t the only one who looked at you sometimes and wondered what would happen if I kissed you,” Liam says, the words as sharp leaving his mouth as they felt when they were stuck in his throat. 

Louis’s face is fully unreadable, the anger dissipating, maybe, or settling into something Liam can’t place at all. It’s not the same as the look on his face before he stormed across the room and kissed Liam, but it’s just as baffling.

“Oh,” he says, finally. It feels small, after all the yelling, and Liam’s left completely adrift by it. Such a small reaction to such a big thing that he finally managed to say. “I—” Louis starts, and then he trails off, shrugging uncomfortably. 

“Please fucking say something,” Liam says when the silence has dragged on for too long. It drags on longer after that, Louis gnawing on his lip and staring at the floor, and every moment Liam’s stomach sinks lower, the horrible dread that he’s got it all wrong, somehow ruined everything all over again, making it hard to breathe.

“You were,” Louis says, eventually, but his voice breaks on the words. “Except when you weren’t. I don’t know. Everything was so fucked back then.”

“This isn’t really the kind of question where you can not know,” Liam says, a spiteful mutter rather than the yelling he was doing earlier. It doesn’t feel any less angry as he says it.

“Don’t know what to tell you about that,” Louis says, sarcasm sliding back into his words. “I don’t have a good answer. It’s complicated.”

Liam sighs. “And this after you got angry with me for not having a good explanation for things.” He’s tempted to shake his head at Louis like he’s a misbehaving child, just for something to do with the unhappiness that’s curdling in his stomach. He takes a deep breath instead. “What about now?” he says, and somehow his voice doesn’t crack. “You said everything was fucked back then, but what about now?”

Louis looks sad, now. That feeling, Liam can read on him with an uncomfortable amount of ease.

“I don’t know, Liam,” is all he says.

This time, Louis isn’t the one who flees. 

—

By the time Liam convinces himself to look at his mobile again, he’s got a nauseating number of messages and seven voicemails. Just the thought of opening the messages makes it hard to breathe, much less the thought of actually listening to the voicemails. It would be so much easier to just delete them all, turn his mobile off and go home and not speak to anyone but Lina and Bear for as many days as it takes for people to stop trying to reach him. He actually considers it, his fingers hovering over the button that’ll turn the phone off for a longer moment than he’s willing to admit, but he doesn’t do it.

He doesn’t open the messages either, but he doesn’t turn it off. 

Either he’ll look at the messages, eventually, or someone will ring him and he’ll convince himself to answer the call.

First, he convinces himself to stop wandering the streets of London and actually get in his car and drive home. He’s not going to go back to the rehearsal at this point, not after he’s made such a ridiculous scene. Not after Louis’s made such a ridiculous scene, either. But he doesn’t need to just stand around on the pavement staring blankly at the buildings around him, trying to think about anything but the fact that Louis kissed him. In front of people.

Not on a dare or as a joke or anything else like that. Liam doesn’t know, exactly, what Louis _was_ thinking when he did it, but he feels like he can be fairly confident that it wasn’t a joke. 

Liam’s home by the next time his mobile goes, buzzing loudly in the cupholder as he sits in the car, trying to convince himself to pick himself up and go inside. He takes a deep breath before he looks at the screen, and another when he sees it’s Harry.

It’s not what he expected. 

He thought it would be Niall—most of the texts he has are from Niall, and Niall’s the one he’s spoken to about this more. And Niall’s the conciliatory one, the one who always helped them smooth things over before. Not that he imagines Niall is pleased right now, but even after all these years the expectations of the dynamics between them are so ingrained. 

Except it’s Harry ringing him, and it makes something curdle deep in the pit of Liam’s stomach. Maybe he’s finally fucked things up too badly for Niall to want to speak to him. Maybe they’re calling it all off and Harry, never particularly inclined towards confrontation himself but more than Niall, is the one who’s volunteered to tell him.

Liam answers the call, his “hello” coming out rough, and barely more than a whisper at that.

“Hi Liam,” Harry says, and Liam was trying to brace himself for about a thousand things at once but it hadn’t even occurred to him to expect the gentleness in Harry’s voice. “Are you alright?”

Liam gulps, so loud he’s sure Harry heard it. “I,” he starts to say, and then it’s like his voice gives out entirely, or he forgets how to form words, or something else, but regardless there’s nothing else coming out of his mouth. He manages a helpless noise, and then some strangled words that at least loosely resemble “I don’t know,” and that’s it.

“I’m taking that as a no,” Harry says. “You don’t sound very alright.” 

“Suppose not,” Liam manages. It sounds mostly like words.

“Thought that might be the case,” Harry says, and his voice is still so soft. Like he thinks Liam’s a skittish animal who needs to be gentled, or a scared child he’s coaxing out from a hiding place. “That was pretty messed up, what happened earlier.” 

Liam wants to shrug, to deflect any need to have an opinion on it, but he can’t do that over the phone. He hums instead.

“Liam,” Harry says, a thread of warning in it behind the gentleness. “You going to tell me why our blocking run-through involved Louis kissing you and then you running away, or am I just going to have to start looking for theories online?”

Exhaling as slowly as possible, Liam contemplates his possible answers. “How much did Niall fill you in on?” he finally asks. 

Harry sighs. “A fair bit,” he says. “But I get the distinct feeling that there’s plenty Niall doesn’t know.”

“There’s plenty I don’t know,” Liam says darkly.

“Tell me what you do know, then.”

Liam doesn’t want to have this conversation in his car, but he doesn’t want to have it anywhere else, either. He doesn’t want to have to get up and walk around while he tries to pull his emotions into any kind of order coherent enough that he could express it with words. “The next time I saw Louis, after I told him I sometimes like blokes with a text message—I assume Niall told you that bit?”—Harry makes a noise that clearly means yes—“Well, after that Louis and I had that row right before that rehearsal, where he was clearly angry that I hadn’t told him before but also just seemed to be kind of angry about the whole thing.”

Harry hums. “But, and sorry for making assumptions, you did tell him specifically because you fancy him, yes? Not just so that he’d know.”

Liam fiddles with his keys in his lap for a moment.

“Yes,” he says. “I thought he might be, er, on the same page, and that it would be enough of a hint. But then he seemed really thrown by it, and then today—well, you were there.” 

Harry makes a thoughtful noise, and Liam settles himself more comfortably in the car. This doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a short conversation. “Is that all you told Louis?” he asks, clearly measured. “Just the text?”

“Essentially,” he says. “I didn’t tell him why I told him, it didn’t seem like a good idea when he was already upset.” He pauses, considering his options for a moment. “Er, I did mention that I’d told you about the whole bisexual thing, and then I may have accused him of being willing to split the whole band up rather than deal with his problems.”

Harry laughs, a rough and surprised sound, and then tries to hide it with a cough. “Oh my,” he says. “‘M sorry, I shouldn’t laugh.”

“No, no,” Liam says. “Laugh away, it was all quite dramatic.” 

“And not entirely untrue, I suppose.” There’s still a bit of a laugh in the words, but it fades as Harry continues speaking. “Not entirely fair to Louis, either, though. We did all agree.”

“We did,” Liam says. “It wasn’t a particularly kind thing of me to say, even the bits of it that are sort of true.”

“No,” Harry says, his tone more sober than a few moments ago. “How’d he react to you telling me before you told him?” There’s a wistfulness in his voice, tinged with sadness, and Liam lets his head fall back against the headrest, thinking briefly of the earliest days of the band when he felt like an interloper but Harry and Louis seemed more bonded than any two people could reasonably be.

“He didn’t seem pleased,” Liam says. “But then, I imagine he picked up what I was hinting at in terms of, er, me and him, and he didn’t think you should’ve got to know that before he did.” 

“All I knew was that you used to fancy him when you were twenty,” Harry mutters. “Not exactly very relevant information now, or at least I hadn’t thought it was.”

Liam shrugs, and then makes a noise that he hopes conveys shrugging as well as he can without Harry being able to see him. “I didn’t think it would be, until suddenly it was.”

Harry snorts. “Well, that’s fair enough,” he says. “But you really did think that—well, that it wasn’t just you?”

It feels like something else that Louis wouldn’t want him to tell anyone, or maybe that he specifically wouldn’t want him to tell Harry. Liam doesn’t know, and he’s not particularly inclined to care right now, either. That’s Louis’s problem; whether the issue is with Harry or with sharing in general, Liam’s allowed to talk to people about his own life.

“There were a few moments, over the last few months,” Liam says, and he can hear his voice going horribly soft about it. “He’d come over to write, or have dinner, and then he’d just stay for ages. One morning he got up before me and when I did get up, he was in the kitchen fixing Lina breakfast and forcing her to drink tea with no sugar.” 

Harry hums. Liam steels himself before he goes on. “I wondered a few times back in the band, too. Sometimes there were just times where it seemed like, I dunno, if I had been willing to be the person to push beyond where we were, he would’ve been okay with it. I didn’t trust the instinct then, even with someone I knew as well as Louis, but I guess I thought I had a better sense of these things now.”

And he really had, is the thing. He’d thought that he was picking up on the right things in Louis’s glances, the way his eyes would catch on Liam’s sometimes. The times Louis would stand too close, touch Liam just to be touching him. The way he fit into Liam’s life so easily, not just into the music parts but into all of it, and seemed about as inclined to extricate himself as Liam was to ask him to leave, which is to say not at all. Liam thinks about Louis’s hands on his hips as they swayed together not at all in time to the music around them after one of his DJ gigs, and about Louis playing video games with Lina while Liam fixed supper and how it felt like all the years had just evaporated the first time Louis hugged him again.

“I don’t want to speculate too much,” Harry says. “You know as well as anyone that it’s been a very long time since I was someone Louis talked to about important things. But I think there’s a very good chance your instincts were spot-on and he just—panicked, I guess. About the implications of it all, probably.”

“I’ve wondered about that,” Liam says, soft and more than a little sad. He thinks that if they were in the same room, Harry would be smiling sadly now, the corner of his mouth turned up but his eyes downcast.

“It did a number on me for sure,” Harry says. He sounds a little wry. “I never had it as bad as Louis, but it really just makes you question everything you think you know about yourself.” He sighs, and Liam just waits, certain there’s more coming. “It gets really difficult to do any, like, self-examination? You just keep bumping up against all these ideas that other people have. I got through it alright, considering—” he trails off.

It sounds like the sort of feeling that Louis would claw against with everything in him, that he’d want to push away from until he didn’t have to consider that someone else might have seen something in him before he saw it in himself.

“Louis hates it when people he actually knows figure things out about him,” Liam says. Harry snorts, low.

“Believe me, I know,” he mutters. There’s a story there, but now’s not the time to ask for it. 

“I didn’t want to put him on the spot,” Liam says. He can hear how sad and tight his own voice is, and it’s only then that he realises how close to tears he is, wrung out from everything that’s happened today. “Thought it might be easier if I just hinted and let him take the opportunity or not, so it wasn’t too obvious. But then this all happened.”

He sighs, but the words just keep coming. “Even if I’d been able to trust myself about it back in the band, it didn’t seem like it would have been worth it. There was so much attention all the time, and then everyone being absolutely mad about you and Louis, and—fuck, I just couldn’t have handled it, and I doubt Louis could have. But it seemed like it might be easier now, and I didn’t want it to just be this thing hanging over me for the rest of my life, that I could may have had except I was too scared to even try—”

“Liam,” Harry says, in that way he has that’s all gentle coaxing. He hadn’t always had it, not as refined as it is now, and Liam remembers noticing it developing in him as he grew up and learned how to cultivate that side of himself. The way he refined his desire to keep the people around him pleased with him into something more deliberate. “I rather think I’m not the person who needs to hear this. And, er, I might not be the person you want to hear it, either.”

Liam wants to scoff at that, dismiss the idea that he doesn’t want Harry knowing this. It feels wrong, grates against the part of him that’s viscerally used to not holding anything of himself back from someone he used to spend what felt like every waking moment with. But in all honesty, he doesn’t know if that’s true, or the right thing to say. Secrets weren’t great, not between the five—four—of them, but they probably could have benefitted from not just incautiously letting each other know everything that wasn’t closely guarded. Leaving room for privacy, or something. 

“I’m not going to be hurt,” Harry adds, warm, and Liam laughs despite himself.

“Think you’re right, mate,” he says. It sounds a little forced, but not entirely false. Liam takes a deep breath, and the next words sound more natural. “Suppose I ought to be saying all this to Louis, if he’s willing to listen.”

“Niall’s working on him, I think. I hope.” Harry sounds just the slightest bit amused, but mostly he sounds fond. Liam likes that, the way it makes him feel like he’s got people on his side, who want to find a way to fix this and get them all back fitting, more or less. 

“Were you the only person willing to talk to me?” he says, a laugh that he thinks betrays some of his lingering anxiety cutting through the words. “Niall was upset with me when Louis and I started fighting.”

Harry huffs out a single laugh. “Niall was alright at first but he got stroppy after you didn’t answer any of his messages. Anyway, he’ll get over it, he’s busy trying to sort Louis out.” 

“Good luck with that,” Liam says, and oh, there’s that bitterness again. It keeps flaring up when he least expects it, the piece of him that isn’t understanding or sad and confused but rather just hurt.

The noise Harry makes is truly incredible, and it’s enough to set Liam off laughing, even if it is rather hysterical. “Niall and I decided he probably didn’t want to hear from me about all of this, considering all the layers of, well, of everything, but—” Harry pauses for a moment, and he takes a breath that Liam can hear clearly down the phone. “Like I said earlier, it’s not like Louis was the only one who got a bit messed up by all the theories and conspiracies and people insisting they knew every detail of our lives.” 

“Harry,” Liam says, just wanting him to know that he can stop, that he doesn’t need to share any more than he actually wants Liam to know.

“No,” Harry says, his voice firm. “I told you for a reason. It’s not doing any of us any good to pretend we haven’t all got issues from how mad those five years were. Just because it’s more obvious for some of us than others doesn’t mean it wasn’t all a big mess of overwhelming things we weren’t prepared for all the time.”

“God,” Liam says, and then, “Looking back, I don’t know how we handled it as well as we did.”

“Seriously,” Harry says. “I don’t know how it went anywhere near as well as it did. A proper miracle that the worst we ever did was scream at each other instead of murdering each other in the night.”

Liam lets his head flop to the side, finally feeling almost easy. “I won’t say I didn’t consider it a few times.”

The way Harry laughs at that makes him feel like his whole body’s got lighter, not weighed down in his seat from the tension of everything. “I’m glad you didn’t,” he says, and that sets Liam off, too.

“You would be,” he says. “So stuck on the idea of having to be alive.”

Laughing together is good. Rehearsal today was bad, and Liam doesn’t feel particularly hopeful about what the next few weeks of his life are going to be like, but at least he can feel hopeful that he hasn’t ruined everything. Still, he feels like he ought to be honest just a little more today.

“I got plenty of therapy about it,” Liam says, and he doesn’t let himself make the words lighthearted. It’s too serious a thing, even if the urge to laugh it off is there. “Things could have been a lot worse, but they weren’t great, either.”

“So did I,” Harry says. “And, don’t take this the wrong way, but it helped a lot to have people to talk to about it who weren’t you lads.”

“It does,” Liam says, even as he knows he’s never been as able to keep steady groups of friends as Harry. “Course, it feels like everything I ever did to work through all of it goes out the window as soon as Louis is involved.”

“Oh, Liam,” Harry says, the almost painful gentleness back in his voice.

“Trust me, I know,” Liam says, helpless, maybe even pathetic. “It’s a very long time to be stupid over the same person.”

“Happens to the best of us,” Harry says. “It’ll get sorted out or it’ll pass, it won’t be like today was forever. You know Niall and I won’t let that happen. We’ve put far too much time into this reunion tour to let it fall apart because Louis’s got himself messed up in the head about something.”

“I appreciate it,” Liam says, his voice embarrassingly wobbly. “That you’re not giving up.”

“‘Course not,” Harry says. “Might call you stupid a few times if the two of you can’t get things sorted, though.”

Liam snorts. “I can’t argue with that, not after how we’ve handled ourselves recently.”

After he hangs up, he texts Harry a quick _thank you_ and Harry responds with _even stupid people don’t deserve to get their hearts messed around_. 

—

Liam dodges Alex’s calls for a full day before the guilt and shame get the better of him. She’s got questions about how rehearsals are going, of course, since he told her about the row, and he’s got no idea if anyone’s filled her in on the most recent rehearsal’s developments. 

He’s silent for too long after what should have been a straightforward question, and her voice turns wary as she says his name.

“The last couple of rehearsals have been pretty rough,” Liam says, picking his words carefully. 

“Oh?” Alex says, just as careful. She doesn’t say “because Louis kissed you and then the two of you had another row?” but suspects she knows that something happened, at least.

Liam hums. “Just sorting ourselves out,” he says, and he knows how obvious it is that he’s hedging, and he knows that Alex knows it too. 

“I heard your last session got cut short. This sounds like it’s rapidly becoming my business, not just something I care about as your friend,” she says, her voice level. Liam’s about to try fumbling his way through an answer to that when she continues. “I get the feeling that you want to keep stuff with the band as private as possible, but it is my job to know a lot of this.” 

“God,” Liam mutters. “I know.” Alex knows so much, but somehow saying it aloud will make it real in a way that it isn’t, not yet. “It’s taking a bit more to sort things out with Louis than I thought it would,” he offers. “It’s—some of it’s things that aren’t mine to tell.”

Alex hums. 

“Sorry,” he adds, and Alex just chuckles.

“Look,” she says. “It’s clear you trust them and there’s no reason to think they’ve got it out for you so you can have your secrets. But don’t think I’m not keeping an eye on the situation, because I am. As your manager but mostly as your friend.”

“Understood,” Liam says and then, on an impulse, “Why don’t you keep a closer eye on it by coming over for dinner this week. It’s been too long.”

“Is this for business or for pleasure?” Alex asks, making it sound as scandalous as possible, a stupid joke that both of them have pulled out entirely too many times. Liam can practically hear her waggling her eyebrows at him, giving him a dramatically overplayed seductive glance.

“For pleasure, of course,” he says, and then, “Bring your kid.” She just laughs.

“She’s got a name, you know.”

“Bring your husband too,” Liam says. “I know he’s got a name as well, but bring him anyway.”

“Well, if you insist,” she says, but she’s laughing too hard to even fake a serious protest. 

She does, of course, arriving with her family in tow for dinner the following day. Lina’s waiting eagerly, and Bear’s settled on the sofa with his X-Box. Liam isn’t particularly in the mood to nag him about being sociable because they have company, and he’ll emerge from his haze of video games as soon as there’s food anyway.

It turns out that having people in his house, chattering and laughing and nearly spilling red wine all over the kitchen counter three different times, well, it makes for a much more pleasant evening than standing over Lina as she drags her feet on her spelling homework, shouting across the room to Bear that he has a project he’s meant to be working on, not just texting when he thinks Liam’s back is turned. 

Instead, they eat a disjointed dinner because none of the timing worked out, and Lina does a demonstration of the presentation she’s working on for her history class, and Bear emerges from his video game cave several times as a result of the meal being drawn out over an hour and a half.

Liam only thinks a handful of times about what it would be like if Louis were there. Whether he’d stay in the kitchen chatting with Liam and Alex, or slink off to play video games with Bear, or if he’d get caught up playing with Lina. He’s seen Louis in so many situations, but this isn’t one of them. Things had already started to fracture by the time that either of them was the type of adult who had other adults over to eat adult dinners together. He doesn’t even know if that’s the sort of thing Louis does with his friends who aren’t Liam. Those aren’t people he knows at all.

In a way, it’s strange to think about how little their lives have overlapped. In the band, it had felt like they’d been destined to find each other, like no one else could ever have fit with Liam the way Louis did. And then it all just broke to pieces, one blow too many after years of being made fragile with them. And it turned out that they weren’t inextricably tied to each other after all, because Liam’s life just kept going, and Louis didn’t ever find his way back into it.

Until he did, of course.

Alex and Jack are caught up watching Lina explain what she’s been learning this week, and all Liam is able to think about is something Niall said a few weeks back, about how any of them could have walked away at any point. It would’ve meant giving up a lot, of course, but—maybe Niall was right. Maybe they really did make that choice every day, and the band was worth it. After all, as Niall pointed out, when it wasn’t worth it anymore for Zayn, he did just up and walk away.

Maybe this whole reunion affair is Louis making that choice again.

Someone is trying to get his attention, Lina chirping out “Dad! Dad!” until he’s pulled from his thoughts.

“Yes?” he asks, trying to pretend he wasn’t completely ignoring everything happening around him.

“When are we having pudding?”

He bursts out laughing. It’s so normal, such a simple piece of his life, in such sharp contrast to everything that’s happening in his head.

“We can do that now,” he says, glancing over at Alex and Jack. They both shrug and smile, in almost eerie unison. People who’ve been married too long, Liam thinks, mentally shaking his head. It twists in his stomach, though. The chance to know someone that well. 

He’d known Louis about that well, even if they were only ever friends. Not that being the kind of friends they were, in the circumstances they were, even felt like an _only_ thing. It was more of an _everything_ , all their time and their careers and their whole lives, wrapped up in each other. And Liam had liked it, and he hadn’t thought much of it at the time, aside from the dawning realisation of wanting to kiss Louis.

Back then, he’d been too young to really conceptualise what it meant to share his whole life with someone. The magnitude of that, the kind of ties it made. Sure, he thought he did, but it—kids think they know things all the time. In hindsight, with everything he knows now, it’s so much clearer just how much it meant to spend all of his workdays and almost all of his days off with the same person and not just not get sick of them, but desperately crave more. 

In all honesty, it wasn’t until it happened with other people that he realised what it had meant with Louis.

Her husband occupied with the kids in the other other, Alex corners Liam in the kitchen after dessert is dished out.

“Hey,” she says, her voice gentle. She nudges him with her elbow. “How are you doing?”

Liam shrugs. He’s better at hedging on the phone than he is in person. “Not sure, if I’m honest. Got a lot going on in my head.”

Alex’s smile is sympathetic, but she doesn’t say anything. “My dad rang the other day,” Liam begins. That bit’s easier. “I know he and my mum worry about me. He didn’t say anything but he did the same thing Mum does, prodding to see if there’s anything going on in my life they don’t know about.” He pauses, considering. “Dad asked me to bring Lina and Bear to visit before school starts back up. At least he didn’t ask outright whether I’m going to have someone coming home with me for Christmas. Mum probably would’ve.”

Alex laughs, familiar and comforting. “Parents,” she says ruefully. “I’m sure they just worry that you’re lonely.” 

“It’s not like they’ve been worrying without reason,” Liam says. His voice doesn’t break, but it’s a near thing. “It’s been a long while since I had—” He can’t find the words for it, the words that imply someone in it with him for the long haul, not just a fleeting thing.

“A partner?” Alex asks. The look she’s giving him is entirely too knowing. “It’s the longest you’ve been single since I’ve known you,” she adds. “Though I don’t think that necessarily means you’re lonely.”

“Suppose not,” Liam says.

Alex is quiet for a moment, swirling her wine glass and frowning down at it. “Liam,” she says finally. “What’s the thing you’re not telling me? It’s clearly got to you.”

Liam’s been thinking a lot about choices tonight, about all the things that have shaped the way his life looks like now. All the things that could have been different. This feels like it might be one of those moments where what he decides could shape things in the future, and he’s just tired of not telling people things.

“I told Louis that I’m bi because I thought—well, I suspected he might be as well,” Liam says. “And then we had a row about it, because he’s all kinds of messed up after all the conspiracy business, and then at the last rehearsal he kissed me and we fought again.”

Alex looks appropriately taken aback. “Oh my,” she says, but then her face softens. “So you thought that might be, and I don’t want to presume too much here—”

Liam cuts her off. “You could not possibly presume more than I did,” he says, wry. 

“Is it a lost cause?” Alex asks. “Do I need to go give him a piece of my mind? Or get Jack to beat him up?”

“Dunno,” Liam says. “I suppose we’ll see if he comes around. Don’t send Jack, though. He’s still quite fit, it might not go well for Jack.”

“I suppose,” Alex says. “Let me know if you change your mind.” She pauses for a moment, and then nudges her elbow against Liam’s again. “You know I’ve got your back if it does go well, yeah? Anything you need, professionally or not.”

Liam grins at her. “So you’d be willing to tell my mum for me, then?”

There’s a loud noise from the other room, Jack chasing Lina and Caytie into the kitchen, and Alex is spared from having to answer.

The whole rest of the evening, all he can think about is all the choices he was making without ever thinking about them. All the implications of them, things he’d never managed to wrap his head around when he was younger. Staying in the band, even during the stretches where every day was a slog. Every day he rang Louis, after, and every day he didn’t. All the messages he let linger unanswered for too long, and the ones he decided were worth it.

The relationships he had because thought they’d be worth it, and the ones he never even considered, the choice that they wouldn’t be worth it made before he even really realised it was a choice at all.

Standing in his kitchen now, dishing second helpings of pudding out for Lina and Bear because he’s too distracted to tell them no, he’s not sure he would have made the same choice. If he knew what he knows now. Maybe it wasn’t even a real choice, maybe if he’d steeled himself and told Louis, or just up and kissed him, maybe that would have blown up in his face.

Liam rather thinks it wouldn’t have, and despite everything, he can’t shake a faint feeling of hope. 

—

It takes some solidly gritted teeth and a bit of a talking to aimed at himself, but Liam does ring Niall. And Niall does answer, which feels like it’s something. He’s not sure what, but something.

“I’m sorry about the other day,” Liam mutters, the words tumbling out of his mouth almost tangled together. 

Niall clears his throat, sounding uncomfortable. “No,” he says. “I owe you an apology for that, I think I needled Louis about it too much instead of letting him work it through in his head.”

“Oh,” Liam says, startled nearly into silence.

“I didn’t think he’d go and do something like that, obviously,” Niall says, laughing roughly. 

Liam thinks about Niall as the eternal fence-sitter, dodging nearly every fight no matter how awkward of a position it put the rest of them in, and then he thinks about this version of Niall who apparently prodded Louis about what was going on with him and Liam enough that he did—that. Grabbed Liam by the face in a room full of people and kissed him.

“I was hoping I’d be able to get him to actually talk to you, but clearly that didn’t go very well. Didn’t imagine he’d do something that mad, though.”

“No,” Liam says, still trying to wrap his head around Niall meddling. Niall meddling _too much_. “Didn’t think that was the kind of thing you’d do when you said you were going to try to see what was up with him. Expected something more subtle, I suppose.”

Niall snorts. “I expect you thought I’d feel him out a bit and then report back to you without ever really getting involved.”

“Well, yes,” Liam says. 

“You’re not the only one who’s grown up,” Niall says, his voice softer now, and Liam can’t argue with it because he really isn’t. He’s glad of it too, of having the chance now to see the ways they’ve all changed.

“Guess not,” Liam says. “Can’t say I don’t like it, either.” He pauses, takes a slow breath. “Thanks for meddling,” he says. “Even if it didn’t work out the way you hoped.”

“You’re welcome,” Niall says. His voice is gentle, and it feels like it’s warming Liam from the inside. “How are you? I imagine that wasn’t a good day for you.”

“No,” Liam says, hearing his own sadness in it. “Though I suppose it means I wasn’t wrong, that I wasn’t imagining it all.”

Niall is silent for a long moment, conspicuous in and of itself. “He did kiss you,” he says finally, and it might be the first time any of them have actually said it aloud. It startles Liam, to hear Niall just say the words like that. Louis really did kiss him. Liam’s got no idea what was going through his head, or what he thought it would accomplish, but whatever it was, he thought that kissing Liam was going to be an important part of it.

“He did,” Liam says. His voice shakes a little, perhaps, but maybe the phone connection will disguise it.

Niall’s response is slow in coming, like he’s considering his words very carefully. He probably is. “And you wanted him to?”

“Well,” Liam says. “Not like that, no. But in general yes.”

“That’s—Liam, that’s a big deal.”

Liam sighs. “You don’t need to tell me. ‘M not sure I’ve ever been more aware of anything in my life than what a big deal this is.”

Niall hums. “I imagine you are.” 

It feels like a moment where Liam ought to laugh, just to break the tension, but he can’t bring himself to actually do it. The moment is too heavy, the implications of it weighing him down. Louis kissing him, in front of the rest of the band and in front of other people too. Niall meddling, caring enough to stick his nose in where before he would have said it doesn’t belong. Harry ringing him to check in, emphasising that he’s not giving up. That they’re not giving up, that this isn’t going to be how it ends. 

“You promise you’re really alright after all those dramatics the other day?” Niall asks, breaking the silence that’s fallen. “I feel like I should tell you not to make up with him, for your own good, especially if he’s going to carry on being such a wanker. Not sure I’m selfless enough for that.”

Liam clears his throat. “Not sure I’d listen, even if you told me to.”

“Well then,” Niall says. “The ball’s in his court, as it were.”

“Yes,” Liam says. “I think he owes me an apology, and an explanation, and I’m not going to ask for them.”

“Good,” Niall says. There’s something in his voice, a note Liam isn’t sure he wants to try and pick apart. He can remember all the times that Louis hassled him into doing things against his better judgement, the times he regretted it and the times he didn’t. It wasn’t quite Liam jumping when Louis said how high, but it was perhaps closer to that than was ideal. But then—Liam almost never regretted a moment of it. Some of his best memories, when he let himself be cajoled, with only the slightest bit of work on Louis’s part, into doing whatever nonsense Louis had got into his head that day.

“God,” Liam says, suddenly bowled over by nostalgia. “Remember when we used to vote on everything?” 

“I do,” Niall says. “We really ran our whole lives that way.”

“It seems so silly, looking back,” Liam says. “But I suppose it did work well enough for a while there.”

“Right up until the end,” Niall says. “There was a lot that fell apart along the way but that didn’t.”

Liam is terribly fond of him, the way he’s always managed to be easy and steady. None of the rest of them have the disposition for that, and without one of them being like Niall, well. He can’t imagine they’d have been able to keep themselves going as well as they did.

“I’m glad it ended the way it did, back then,” Liam says. “Not after, not when we all scattered, but it was good we did it that way.”

“It was good to do it on our own terms,” Niall says. “I’m glad we got that.” He’s quiet for a moment, and Liam makes a soft noise of agreement. “Liam,” Niall asks, “Did you ever think about this, with Louis, back in the band?”

Liam can’t help sounding a bit sad when he answers. “More than I should have, I suspect.” It’s not his favourite part of looking back on those years, the way he’d been half pathetic and half resigned, a thread of what-if curling through his heart even as he put as much of himself as he could into relationships with other people. And it’s not like Louis was available for most of it either. Liam was silly and had a crush and he wasn’t ever going to be the person who split up his best mate’s relationship for—well, for anything. Certainly not for his own silly whims, even if it’s turned out fifteen years later that maybe they were the kind of silly whims that stick around for basically your whole life.

Niall hums. “Is that so?” he says, forcing Liam to say that it is indeed so. It’s a bit embarrassing, despite everything that’s happened since, despite how many far more embarrassing situations Niall’s seen him in.

“Not very seriously,” Liam clarifies. He feels like he ought to justify it a bit. “But the idea of it crossed my mind.” He pauses, considers if he needs to elaborate more. “It was something I was fairly certain I wanted. Just didn’t seem worth blowing up everything then, especially since I didn’t really know if Louis would have wanted it.”

“Do you think he wants it now?” Niall asks, and then Liam hears him suck in a breath, quick. “Sorry,” he says. “You don’t need to answer that unless you want to. I’m being nosy.”

Liam laughs, helpless and fond. “I don’t know for certain,” he says. “But I can’t shake the hope. It seemed like he did, even before I said anything to him, and since then nothing he’s done has actually involved saying it’s not something he’s interested in. And, er, he did kiss me.”

“He did that,” Niall says. “He made quite a scene with it, which isn’t really the sort of thing a person does with someone they don’t have any interest in kissing.”

“It isn’t,” Liam says. “I’m still not going to do anything unless he apologises, though.”

There’s a silence between them for a few seconds, nothing tense or awkward. It’s just the conversation settling as they mull over everything that’s been said. Niall breaks it eventually, clearing his throat before he speaks.

“Liam,” Niall says. “If we reschedule the blocking rehearsal, is that going to be alright for you?” His voice is serious, and Liam appreciates it more than he can say.

“It will be,” he says. “I’ll make it alright.”

“If you’re positive,” Niall says. “I don’t want to make things worse. Or at least not much worse.”

“I am,” Liam says, and then, “Are you going to meddle?” Niall just laughs, deep and earnest.

“I might,” Niall says. “I’m invested, you know. I have a vested interest in the two of you not ending every rehearsal halfway through because one of you’s decided to be dramatic.”

He’s not saying it, as such, but Liam can hear what’s between the lines. Niall doesn’t think this is a lost cause. Niall, the one who was dispatched to deal with Louis in the immediate aftermath of whatever the hell that was, doesn’t think it’s a hopeless venture.

Liam’s angry, of course. He didn’t deserve to be inexplicably kissed in the middle of rehearsal, and then dragged into a miserable row.

But if it’s not hopeless, well. It’s Louis. Liam’s forgiven him for worse.

“Liam,” Niall says. “We just want the two of you to be happy, you know. It’s the sort of thing worth meddling for.”

—

The rehearsal happens, just a straight redo of the one they were meant to have the week before. Liam woke up the morning of it feeling like every muscle in his body was clenched, and the feeling hasn’t passed even after he’s got Lina herded off to school and had two cups of tea and triple checked that Bear is coming over that night, even though it’s only Thursday. The tension in his shoulders only increases as he drives to the studio, and he keeps having to tell himself to unclench his jaw. 

He’s the first one to arrive, driven out of his house by the sheer nervous energy he was collecting as he paced around every room. The choreographer, his assistant, and Harry’s vocal coach all show up before any of the rest of the band, and Liam’s mortifyingly pleased to have people he can make idle small talk with so there’s no chance of being stuck alone with Louis. He’s met the vocal coach a few times now, so that conversation goes easily enough. As easily as any conversation could go when Liam’s worried he might vibrate right out of his skin, at least.

Louis’s late, and Liam’s never been more grateful to him for sidling in five minutes past call time, a steaming cup of tea in one hand. It’s so obvious, the way he too was avoiding the possibility of being alone with Liam, and Liam’s just relieved to skip the awkward silence.

There’s no grand dramatics this time—no one screams at anyone else, or kisses anyone else, or anything more than a few heartfelt disagreements over staging and the order of the setlist. That last one is Harry and Niall anyway, and they’ve never been the ones for big dramatic fights. It’s resolved quickly, too, with Fireproof and Strong swapping places. Liam can’t even be bothered with it, since the staging really does seem to flow better with the new order. 

The thing is—it feels like Liam catches Louis looking at him every fifteen seconds, though he knows logically that it can’t be that often. He’s not even looking at Louis every fifteen seconds, and Louis isn’t looking back at him every time he does.

It’s hard to focus on the staging, figuring out where everyone ought to be stood and how they ought to maneuver themselves around each other, when he keeps feeling, or imagining, the weight of Louis’s eyes on him. It makes his skin tingle, makes him want to turn back and stare too.

He’s already glancing too much. Louis hasn’t done anything close to an apology, hasn’t done anything but, apparently, decide to spend the whole rehearsal staring at him like a lunatic.

More than halfway through, during a lull where Harry’s talking about the bit where they do solo songs and everyone else has evidently decided to just let him have his way, Niall pulls Liam aside and whispers frantically, “Have you got any idea why Louis is—” he cuts himself off, making an incomprehensible gesture. “Whatever it is he’s doing today. Why he’s doing that.”

“Honestly none at all,” Liam hisses. “I suppose I’ll know if he ever tells me but—nothing’s happened, if that’s what you’re asking. He’s not said anything to me since the last rehearsal.”

Niall frowns, lines creasing down his forehead. “Hmm,” he says.

Liam’s thinking about how Niall said he might meddle, and the intrigued furrow of his brow when Liam said nothing new has happened between them. “Are you going to do something?” he whispers, and Niall shrugs.

“Might do,” he says. There’s a little grin on his face. “‘S not comfortable, the two of you giving each other looks like that all the time.”

Luckily, or perhaps not, they’re interrupted by Harry shouting for them. Everyone’s ready to move on to blocking out the next few songs, and Liam’s already been responsible for so much disruption. He jumps at the opportunity to look like he’s focused on the task at hand, feeling a bit like an eager-to-please kid again.

Louis doesn’t stop with the staring, and by the time they’re figuring out the encore, Liam’s given up on pretending he doesn’t notice. If Louis is going to stare at him, unreadable expressions on his face, Liam’s going to stare back. He doesn’t know what Louis is reading in his face, if anything, but he doesn’t care about hiding himself away from this anymore. Louis can figure out whatever he figures out; there’s nothing left that Liam feels any need to hide from him.

Even with the strange tension, it’s far from the worst rehearsal they’ve ever had, even excluding the one where Liam ran away in the middle. It’s a comforting thing, to know that they’ve made it through days worse than this. 

The way he feels Louis’s eyes fixed on him as he gathers his things up nearly has him dragging his feet. He could linger, wait to see if Louis lingers too. Walk out together, perhaps, or at least have a few moments of privacy to talk. 

But then—he said he wasn’t going to apologise, and he doesn’t want to waver. If there’s something Louis wants from him, he can ask for it. Even if it’s just Liam’s time, he can ask for that. Staring at Liam for hours on end isn’t the same as asking. Louis can tell him what he wants from this relationship the same way he’s told Liam a thousand other things, the same way Liam put into words at least a suggestion of what he wants from Louis.

If he can’t do that much, then Liam doesn’t want this anyway. Louis will get Liam’s contrition for his thoughtlessness when he can offer up his own, and not before.

It’s not running away this time, but Liam doesn’t linger, either. He leaves at the same time as Harry’s vocal coach, chatting about how it turns out they’re both fond of a woman who came on the radio during one of their breaks. He doesn’t let himself think about whether or not Louis is following him out, or if he wishes Liam had lingered so they could have a moment alone, or anything to do with Louis.

He can agonise over it all tonight, perhaps, if he has trouble falling asleep, but he’s not going to let it eat up his entire day.

—

Liam doesn’t expect it when his doorbell goes in the middle of the afternoon, but he answers it dutifully. Louis is stood there, shifting his weight nervously from foot to foot. He smiles, and that’s nervous too, and then he steps past Liam into the entryway. Liam’s stomach is twisting, a thousand emotions churning it in, and he can’t find a way to form any words at all.

“I,” Louis says, and then, “You,” and then after a pause he simply says, “Oh, fuck it,” and grabs Liam the same way he did at the rehearsal and kisses him.

Liam’s somehow even more taken aback by this than the one in the middle of their rehearsal, because in all the ways he’d considered that this might be fixed, Louis showing up at his house and just—just fucking kissing him again had never occurred to him. Even though he did it once, even though Liam had this carefully thought through list of reasons he thought that Louis had probably wanted to kiss him.

But now Louis is here again, and kissing him again, and it isn’t like the first time. There isn’t that angry edge to it, and they’re not derailing a whole rehearsal, and Liam’s still angry with him for all of it but maybe, maybe he’s not angry enough to actually stop it.

It’s like he said to Harry: everything he’s learned goes out the window when Louis is involved.

Liam kisses him back, letting himself curl an arm tight around Louis’s back to keep him close. He feels solid in a way he didn’t in Liam’s dream, his shirt soft against Liam’s skin but his body warm. He smells, ever so faintly, of cigarettes, and he tastes of mint, and the idea of Louis sat in his car outside Liam’s house, chewing gum because he’s thinking of bursting through the front door and kissing Liam silly, well.

That’s not one that Liam was prepared to reckon with today.

It’s not even noon. Liam’s pretty sure he’s meant to be getting ready for a lunch with someone.

He doesn’t care, not with Louis’s tongue sliding across his lips, Louis’s hand tangling in the ends of his hair and pulling his head down to kiss him more thoroughly. 

“God,” he feels himself say, and it’s fully swallowed by Louis’s mouth against his. Liam can barely remember all the reasons he doesn’t think this is a good idea. They exist, he’s certain of it, but they’re fully buried in his mind by Louis pressed up into his space, the way his fingers are hot on Liam’s skin, the way his teeth keep catching on Liam’s lower lip, tugging until Liam gasps. 

When Louis finally takes a half a step back, Liam can barely get his eyes to focus. He’s breathing heavily, and his fingers itch to just tug Louis back in. 

The fact that Louis is here and kissing him like that, that feels like something. Not everything, perhaps, but a big piece of it.

“Niall told me not to do that,” Louis says, breathless and flushed. “But it seems to have worked rather well.”

Liam laughs, rough and just as breathless as Louis looks. “Fuck,” he says, entirely too overwhelmed to be eloquent. “I didn’t expect that,” he adds, about the only coherent thing he can think to say.

Louis laughs too, but his eyes flick to Liam’s mouth as he does it. Liam’s probably imagining that he can feel his pulse speeding up, but then, maybe not. “It wasn’t really the plan,” Louis offers. “But then I got here and you were here and it just seemed like the best way to get my point across.”

“Have to say,” Liam says, “I’m not sure what your point was.” 

Louis gives him a look, uncertain and maybe overwhelmed, and he bites his lip.

“I’m not sure I care, either,” Liam says, and he closes the distance between them.

Louis kisses him like nothing Liam’s ever allowed himself to imagine, desperate and clinging and like he never wants to let go. It’s overwhelming, more than Liam can process, and he’s far more interested in the spot under Louis’s jaw where he can feel Louis’s pulse thudding, anyways.

He doesn’t know, precisely, how he ends up with his back pressed into a wall, Louis crowding up against his front, but it doesn’t seem like the most important part of the situation to pay attention to, anyway. He wants to focus on shoving his hands up under Louis’s shirt, feeling how his skin is warm and soft and swallowing the noise he makes when Liam scrapes his fingernails down his sides. It’s somewhere between a laugh and a gasp, half caught in Louis’s throat, and Liam wants to hear it at least another thousand times.

He repeats the motion, because he can, and Louis does make the noise again. Liam’s unreasonably pleased about it, the way Louis so clearly wants this. Wants _him_. He does it a third time, and this time Louis’s gasp turns into a rough, “Fuck, Liam,” hot and muffled against Liam’s mouth. His hands are under Liam’s shirt now, too, squeezing at Liam’s hips the way he did when he cajoled Liam into dancing with him except, somehow, a thousand times more intense. His palms are hot against Liam’s skin, and he’s digging his nails in, the sharp sting of it intensifying every time Liam nips at his lips.

Louis says his name again, twice, each time more breathless than the last. 

Liam’s let himself imagine this so seldom, a fantasy mostly reserved for his most shameful and unsubtle dreams. Louis was never allowed, never something he could have, except for a few heady weeks recently when it felt so close to being in his grasp that imagining it felt like cheating himself out of the real experience.

All this to say—he wasn’t prepared for what it’s actually like. Perhaps he wouldn’t have been even if he’d spent every night for the last twenty years imagining Louis’s hands sliding from his hips to his arse, perhaps the reality of the experience would still have overwhelmed him so much he forgot to breathe for a few moments. As it is, Liam thinks that if he weren’t firmly pressed to the wall, he might have lost his footing entirely, completely unbalanced by the way Louis’s fingers caught in his belt for just a moment before sliding into the back pockets of his jeans. The image of Louis undoing his flies and pushing his trousers down overwhelms Liam, briefly, and then he has to nudge Louis’s head back up from where he’s focused on the curve of Liam’s neck.

Liam just needs to kiss him again right now, is all, and Louis doesn’t just let him do it, he encourages it with soft little noises against Liam’s mouth and the way he tilts his head back and the whimper that might’ve started out as Liam’s name.

Eventually, Liam has a brief fit of reason, pulling his mouth away from Louis’s to murmur “What the fuck are we doing?” just a breath away from his skin. Louis tilts his head up, so close that he can barely meet Liam’s eyes without his own crossing. It makes Liam want to laugh, or it would if he could feel anything close to mirth right now. Everything feels too heavy for that.

But then, Louis is smiling at him and he’s saying Liam’s name, twice, and then, “Just—fuck—I’ve wanted to do this for ages.”

“Yeah?” Liam says, smiling helplessly.

“It kept not being an option,” Louis says. He shrugs, his shoulders moving even though his hands are still curled into the fabric of Liam’s shirt. “But now I think it is.”

It’s not enough, and Liam knows it’s not enough. There’s so many other things to discuss. There’s the band, and how they’re going to fit into each other’s actual lives, and what this means for working together, and if they’re going to tell people, and what was going on in Louis’s head over the last weeks, and right at this moment Liam doesn’t care about any of it.

He cares about how Louis so close Liam can feel it when he breathes, and how soft Louis’s hair is when he tangles his fingers in it, floppy and unstyled and somehow exactly how Liam remembers it, even though he’s never got to do this before. The way Louis is stepping back in for another kiss seems infinitely more important than all the things they’ll need to discuss, eventually. Liam doesn’t want to hear the explanations when he can feel them in the way that Louis’s mouth trails down the side of his neck and the scrape of his teeth across Liam’s collarbone. 

It’s been far too long since Louis spoke when Liam manages a response. His voice is rough, and it’s muffled because he hasn’t pulled back enough from Louis’s lips to speak clearly, but he manages to say, “I was so sure it wasn’t an option that I tried not to even think about it.”

Louis actually makes a confused noise, pulling his head away so that he can furrow his brow at Liam. “What—Oh, right, what I said.” He shakes his head, smiling now, and Liam knows they ought to stop now, have this conversation while they’re both thinking about it, but Louis’s lips are pink from kissing and it feels like it might be enough that they both want this.

“I’m a little, you know, distracted,” Liam says, laughing a bit. Louis laughs too, and he tips his head forward to rest it against Liam’s shoulder. Liam can’t resist pressing a kiss to the side of it, giddy with the realisation that that seems like something he can do, that it won’t even stand out after the last ten minutes of Louis’s mouth sealed against his.

“Good,” Louis mumbles into Liam’s shirt, still laughing. Liam can feel his mouth moving, the hot dampness of his breath. He shivers, thrown once again by the simple fact that this is happening. “I like you distracted,” Louis adds, and then Liam truly is distracted again, by the way Louis is kissing up the side of his neck, doing things with his teeth that Liam knows will leave embarrassing marks tomorrow.

It’s as good a reason as any to stop thinking so much, and just let himself follow Louis’s lead. It’s what he’s wanted for longer than he can bear to think about, anyway.

—

Somewhere between the entryway where Louis kissed him, and the corridor that leads to his bedroom, Liam has another absurd fit of sanity. “Are we actually doing this?” he asks, realising with a strange abruptness that Louis’s never seen Liam’s bedroom, not in this house, not the one he’s lived in alone for years. “What is it that we’re doing, right now?”

Louis’s fingers are hooked through the belt loops of Liam’s jeans. “I had a whole speech,” he says. “But if we pretend I actually said it instead of forgetting it entirely when I saw you standing there looking—the way you do, then I was very much hoping it would end with both of us naked in your bed. Or out of it, I suppose. Beggars can’t be choosers and whatnot.”

“You can tell me later,” Liam says. There’s a strange surreality to it, to Louis in front of him with his shirt half unbuttoned, because Liam’s fingers got ahead of his mind and he was desperate to smooth them across Louis’s stomach. 

Louis laughs, almost hysterical, and drags Liam into another kiss.

The next few minutes are a blur of stumbling feet, Louis’s hands pushing uselessly at Liam’s shirt and then his jeans, Liam’s no better, more tangled in the ends of Louis’s shirt than actually getting it off him. he feels like a teenager again, fumbling through things he understood only in theory, his mind hazy with the newness of it.

That part’s definitely the same; he feels like he’s caught up in a fog of sensation. Louis is all around him, something he can see and smell and hear but also touch and taste. 

“Come _on_ ,” Louis says, and it’s not until he does that Liam realises he’s been pushed down the corridor, that they’re once again stumbling toward his bedroom. “Come on, I’m not going to take all your clothes off in the middle of your house, what if one of your children appears out of nowhere?”

“They’re at school,” Liam says, unable to even attempt a joking response. 

Louis laughs and shakes his head, kissing Liam once quickly before lacing their fingers together and making another attempt at herding Liam toward the bedroom, with significantly more success now that they’re not distracting Liam by kissing him the whole time.

“Well then,” Louis says, and there’s a kind of delight in his voice that Liam isn’t sure he’s ever heard before, “Let’s get through this business before they get home.”

“God,” Liam says, helpless with laughter. “I can’t say that’s the sexiest way anyone has ever asked me to bed.”

Louis shrugs. “But it’s working, isn’t it?” And Liam can’t argue with that, because he is following Louis into the bedroom, pushing the door shut behind them even though no one else is home. The click as it latches feels like the final hurdle, the last thing that had to happen for this to feel like it’s real. Next to the bed, Louis is smiling at him, just a hint of sheepishness in it now.

“Hi,” he says when Liam turns to him, and then he bites his lip.

It’s comforting that Liam’s not the only one suddenly feeling how much this is going to matter, how important it is and all the ways it could go wrong. It’s not going to stop him, not now, but it still feels like being hit in the face with a brick. He’s going to sleep with Louis, right now, today, and later there will be consequences to that. For them, for their friendship, for their careers, for the reunion tour. They’re standing here in Liam’s bedroom, more than old enough to know better than to do this on a whim, and they’re still going to do it.

It leaves Liam breathless, unable to do anything but close the distance between them.

It’s been a very long time since anyone but Liam undressed himself, and even longer since it was someone new. Someone whose fingers he’d never felt on his skin before, even if in so many ways this intimacy with Louis feels more familiar than is really deserved. 

Still, Liam imagines he can feel the guitar calluses on Louis’s fingers as he traces them over Liam’s chest and stomach, tugging him toward the bed that Liam made only the most halfhearted attempt at making this morning. The duvet is pulled most of the way up, untidily, and one of the pillows is still on the floor. It would be embarrassing if it were anyone but Louis. 

But it is Louis, who has seen far messier bedrooms of Liam’s, and who is one of the messiest people Liam’s known in his whole life, and who, perhaps most importantly, doesn’t seem to be thinking about the state of Liam’s bed at all as he flops backward onto it, his shirt falling open. Liam lets his eyes trace over the line of Louis’s collarbones, the words inked there more faded than he remembers, the curve of Louis’s stomach and hips, the way he’s braced on his elbows and staring up at Liam.

“Get down here,” Louis says, and Liam finishes undoing his jeans and then, well, why would he pick this moment to start being able to say no to Louis?

From there, the whole experience is a blur of sensation, a few moments standing out clearly from the taste of Louis’s mouth and the endless press of his skin against Liam’s. Liam pushing Louis’s pants down, seeing his cock stiff against his belly. Nosing into the dip of his hip, tasting the skin there and then biting when Louis squirms. The noise Louis makes when Liam’s teeth scrape over the skin near his cock, hissed and sharp. Kissing his way back up the skin Louis’s stomach, the hair higher on his chest softer than Liam expected. The way he gasps when Liam pinches his nipple, and then groans when Liam murmurs a joke about it into his mouth.

Louis bending over him, his head resting against Liam’s hip as he laughs at Liam for being too desperate to keep still. The noise Louis makes when Liam pushes nearly too far into his throat, the way Liam can see his hips moving against nothing. Nearly kicking Louis in the head when Louis catches him in a ticklish spot. Dragging Louis back up the bed because Liam needs to touch him. Wrapping his hand around Louis’s cock for the first time, hot and heavy, already slick when Liam slides his hand so the tip is fully uncovered. Feeling Louis’s rough gasp against his shoulder when Liam rubs his thumb across the tip of his cock. Swallowing the sound Louis makes when he comes, feeling him shudder against Liam. 

Louis kissing him after, his mouth gone a bit slack but still clearly determined. Pushing Liam onto his back, straddling his legs, kissing him until Liam can’t see straight and then a bit more, sliding back down Liam’s body to suck him off. Liam, wrung out and breathless, dragging Louis back up the bed to kiss him, tasting his own come on Louis’s tongue.

If Liam were younger, he might have rolled Louis back over after that and gone for another round. As it is, he’s limp and breathing heavy, and Louis is collapsed on top of him, sweaty and sticky and kind of—perfect, actually. Liam’s rapidly becoming uncomfortably warm, and he’d like a shower and a glass of water and he’d like to kiss Louis some more, taste the sweat that’s gathered on his skin and the spot on his temple where his hair is slicked down with it.

The only thing he manages to summon the energy to actually do is shove Louis partly off him, grumbling about being too hot at the same time that Louis grumbles about being dislodged. Still, he moves himself the rest of the way off Liam, choosing instead to wrap himself up fully in the duvet. It’s the middle of summer, and Liam doesn’t understand how he can bear it but he’s charmed by it nonetheless. 

Liam ought to check the time, to see how long he has before they’re not alone anymore, and perhaps also to see if there’s time to roll around in the bed for a bit, snogging like teenagers who can’t bear to stop touching each other for even a few moments. He’s starting to consider finding his mobile, which he thinks is in the pocket of his jeans on the floor by the bed but might be in another room entirely, when Louis rolls over and pokes him in the belly. His cheeks are still pink.

“You’ve been talking about me with Harry and Niall, haven’t you?” he says. 

Liam considers hedging, trying to skirt the truth. But it doesn’t seem worth it, not when it’s Louis and when it’s the four of them stumbling back towards something like friendship.

“Course I have,” Liam says. Despite everything, he’s surprised when Louis just throws his head back and laughs.

—

When Liam emerges from the shower, Louis is settled at the kitchen table, his hands curled around a mug of tea he’s clearly just made himself. His hair is still damp, dripping at the ends, and he looks up and smiles as Liam walks into the room. 

“Hi,” Liam says.

“Hi yourself,” Louis says, and the way he smiles makes Liam’s stomach all kinds of absurd things. “There’s a cuppa for you,” he adds, gesturing to the counter where there is, indeed, a cup of tea.

“Thanks,” Liam says, and it feels silly and small and yet also like he’s trying to say thank you for so much more than just the tea.

The silence that falls around them is comfortable, companionable in a way that Liam hasn’t experienced with someone in a long time. There’s something different about it, when there’s something that might be the foundation of a real romantic relationship. It feels hopeful in a way Liam hasn’t really let himself examine for weeks now, or possibly ever. He’s never before sat with Louis sipping tea quietly and considered that this might be the beginning of a new stage of their relationship. 

Louis interrupts Liam’s thoughts by setting his mug down abruptly. “I owe you an apology for, well,” he says, pausing to wave one of his hands around vaguely before he finishes the thought. “For flipping out, I suppose.”

“Rather,” Liam says, about the sternest response he can manage. It’s hard to feel as put out about it as he thinks he ought to when Louis is reaching across the table for his hand, his fingers drawing idle shapes across the back of it for a few moments before he laces his fingers through Liam’s.

“I’m sorry,” Louis says, and then he shakes his head, pressing his lips together briefly. “It was pretty shit of me, to get angry with you for that, when you trusted me with something important.”

Liam nods. He knows all the reasons, or thinks he knows, but it feels immeasurably good to hear Louis say the words. 

“What happened?” Liam asks.

Louis doesn’t answer right away, but he doesn’t shrug or dismiss the question or anything else that would send Liam into a tizzy. He looks pensive, frowning down at his tea, and then squeezes Liam’s hand. Liam suspects it’s meant to be reassuring, and it is. The version of Louis who dragged Liam into that corner to whisper-yell at him wouldn’t have thought to do something like that.

“I wish I knew how to explain it,” Louis says, finally. He frowns again, for just a moment, and then shrugs, clearly resigned. “In all honesty, whatever Harry said about it is probably pretty close to the mark.” He doesn’t seem pleased about it, exactly, but then Liam doesn’t imagine that anyone would feel pleased about any of that.

Liam nods. “He said that you probably got hung up in your own head about the idea of people figuring things out about you, essentially.”

Louis laughs, low and wry. “That’s about the gist of it, yeah.” He sighs, world-weary in a way that Liam still isn’t used to seeing on him. “I still shouldn’t have had a go at you about it, but getting that text just felt like you were jumping to conclusions about me and even though I knew I’d wanted you to, it just—grated.”

Liam knows how hard Louis works to hide it, but he also knows about the raw places inside of Louis, the ragged edges of him that haven’t worn smooth even with all the years that have passed. “That makes sense,” he says, and his voice cracks just thinking about it. He’s glad of the simple answer, such as it is, and of the fact that Louis was able to give it, but it’s also hard to think about the mark all the years of conspiracies and harassment and outright cruelty left on Louis. It might be easier if Liam hadn’t known him before all of it, if one of the versions of Louis that exists in his memory wasn’t Louis at eighteen, frightened and insecure and reckless and so determined that it makes Liam ache to remember it. 

“I’m still absolutely shit at talking about it,” Louis says, and he sounds sad about it. Haunted, even. “I got to where I could with a therapist, a bit, but it doesn’t come easily.” Here he shrugs, one of those resigned gestures that Liam’s always felt sat uncomfortably on him. He prefers the Louis who shows up when they’re writing, excited and energetic and sure of himself. “I couldn’t even talk to El about it the way I needed to, not about the way I could feel the pressure of it changing me.”

Helpless, Liam just flips his hand over under Louis’s loose grip, twisting it around so that they’re holding hands properly. “This is a start,” he says, barely more than a whisper. There’s a lump in his throat making it hard to get the words to come out properly.

Louis lifts their joined hands off the table, presses one kiss to Liam’s knuckles and then another. “I suppose it is,” he says, and there’s a smile curling at his lips. Liam can’t help the delirious bubble of hope in his stomach. It feels like all the pieces are falling into place, like it did the first time they all got over themselves and managed a cohesive performance as a band, like it did the first time he and Louis sat down and created something on their own that turned out to be a real song.

Liam could lean forward across the table right now, press a kiss to the corner of Louis’s mouth. It might derail the conversation, the sheer delight he’d feel at getting to do it, and technically they haven’t said in so many words that that’s what they do now. But he doesn’t think he’s reading too much into it, to think that Louis has the same hopes for this conversation as Liam does. After all, he’s the one who laced their fingers together to begin with. He’s the one whose thumb is still moving idly across the back of Liam’s hand, smooth sweeping gestures that make it hard for Liam to think about anything else.

“You could have told me,” Louis says, into the silence that’s far more comfortable than Liam thought one could be under these circumstances. “That you fancy blokes, I mean. You could have told me before. When we were younger.”

Liam shrugs, all the awkwardness of being 19 settling back into him for just a moment.

“I know,” Liam says softly. “I wish I had told you. But there was never anyone who seemed worth making a fuss for, and I couldn’t think how else to go about it. Except—”

Louis raises an eyebrow, expectant.

“Except for you,” Liam says. “Which wasn’t really an option, as we discussed.” Louis only briefly looks even mildly cowed, and in fact mostly looks smug.

“As long as you admit that I _am_ worth making a fuss for,” he says, and Liam is just—God, the easy way Louis says it just bowls him over. 

“Of course you are,” Liam says, so honest it makes him feel raw. He can’t imagine anyone more worth making a fuss over than Louis, and in fact he’s upended his life plenty to cater to Louis’s whims, so what’s once more for something that, actually, doesn’t seem like a whim at all?

Louis just grins at him, that transparent delighted smile that Liam’s always been able to put on his face and always been unbearably proud of when he does. The look Louis gets, the way his whole face crinkles up when you’ve pleased him, it’s a bit addictive. That’s the sort of thing Harry meant when he said Louis was an easy person to fancy. 

“Is that what we’re talking about?” Liam asks. His voice breaks again, and he can feel himself going pink in the cheeks. “If this is something that we’re going to—make a fuss about?”

Louis’s gaze turns contemplative, and this thumb stills on Liam’s hand. “We’ve already made quite a bit of a fuss, wouldn’t you say? Be silly to stop now, right when we’ve got through to the fun part.”

It’s not a surprise, but hearing it still makes Liam’s heart feel like it’s about to burst.

“Thank god,” he says, taken aback by how obvious the relief is in his voice. Louis frowns for a moment, catches Liam’s eye with a look Liam’s seen on him a thousand times at least—his don’t worry, I’ll take care of it face. For a mortifying moment, he thinks he might cry from the sheer weight of all the things he’s feeling, and he actually covers his eyes with his free hand. 

Louis breathes out, Liam’s name half-buried by the sound of his exhale, and it’s absolutely surreal to be here, after so many years, finally giving name to all the things that Liam had almost convinced himself had been entirely in his imagination.

“What changed?” he manages to ask, even though a big part of him just wants to lunge across the table and kiss Louis again. Remind himself of the fact that this is all real, that Louis here in Liam’s kitchen talking like this could be a real relationship.

The corner of Louis’s mouth quirks up. “It would be a lie to say that Niall’s meddling had nothing to do with it,” he says, looking sheepish enough that it’s funny rather than infuriating. Louis is so good at that, at finding the perfect amount of self-deprecation that keeps anyone from ever taking him too seriously or being too cross with him. “I suppose I just needed someone to give me a bit of a push, and he’s been up my arse the whole time we’ve been doing this. You know he told me he didn’t want anything to do with this reunion if it was just going to be my midlife crisis project or a way to get you back.” 

Liam laughs despite himself. “Is that way you rowed about at Harry’s?”

Louis nods. “Don’t distract me,” he says. “The other stuff’s more important. Like how it was pretty shit when you would barely look at me, that made me feel awful.” He pauses, sweeps his thumb across Liam’s hand again. “And I missed you a stupid amount, all the time. I couldn’t go five minutes without thinking about something I wanted to text you or wishing you were around to laugh at something with me.”

“Yeah?” Liam says, pleased in the kind of way that makes his stomach feel warm, and more than willing to fish for compliments when Louis seems so happy to give them.

“Yeah,” Louis says, “You numpty. Of course I missed you, I’ve never actually got to have so much of your company it felt like enough. Why did you think I always found the stupidest reasons to keep you around at all hours?” He clears his throat. “I kept thinking that I should’ve just turned around when I got your text and gone back to your house and fucking kissed you then. Not even given myself time to get too much in my head about it.”

“I would have absolutely lost it,” Liam says, unable to be anything less than honest. “I thought—well, I hoped that I wasn’t imagining it, but I couldn’t have anticipated _that_.”

“That’s the whole point,” Louis says, all smug and gleeful. “Gotta keep ‘em on their toes,” he adds, in a truly abysmal facsimile of an American accent. Liam just shakes his head. He’s too pathetically, wonderfully fond to even make fun.

Louis reaches across the table with his other hand, curling it around where their fingers are still laced together. “That’s what Harry said I ought to have done, though I’ll be honest, I’m not sure he was entirely serious.”

That one truly takes Liam by surprise. Louis must be able to tell by the look on his face, the way his eyebrows raise, because he shrugs. “He’s always been good at letting what other people think roll off his back. Not letting his worries run his life. Seemed like he might have some useful perspective.”

It really is like Niall said the other day—Liam’s not the only one who’s grown up.

“Did he?” Liam asks.

“‘Course,” Louis says. “He’s a clever lad, he thinks a lot about this sort of thing. Told me about how he tries to think about things so that he can keep his ideas of himself separate from other people’s ideas of him. It was all a bit new age for me, I’ll be honest, but the bits about not letting the fear of potentially making the madness worse run my life was helpful.”

“It does seem like it’s got better with time,” Liam says. “At least as far as I can tell.”

“It has,” Louis says. “And the only thing that’s going to keep it getting better is more time. I can’t control it, so I might as well control other things, like whether I’m making myself miserable having a row with one of my best friends who, to be honest, I fancy a kind of stupid amount.”

Liam nods. “That sounds very healthy and stable,” he says, and Louis sighs.

“I suppose it is.” He shakes his head. “Old age comes for us all.”

It’s a nice moment to sit with, feeling the way his shoulders rise and fall with every breath. Feeling Louis’s hand still pressed to his, the places their skin touches growing warm. Watching Louis as he watches Liam.

“There is going to be plenty of mess,” Louis says, finally breaking the silence. His voice is soft and, for the first time today, scared. “It would be fair of you to not want to put up with all of it. People are going to be awful online.”

“I already told you,” Liam says. “You’re worth any mess and fuss and hassle that might come my way. Or our way. I’d rather have you with all of that than the other way around.”

Louis closes his eyes for a moment, exhaling slowly. “You understand that I absolutely need to kiss you now, yeah?” Liam laughs, pleased and overwhelmed and smug and just—well, mostly just happy. Louis has to stand up halfway, and let go of Liam’s hand, but he leans across the table to kiss Liam.

The angle is terrible, and Liam is laughing about how terrible it is, which makes their teeth click. But he’s kissing Louis, and he’s going to get to kiss Louis again plenty of times, and a lot of those kisses will be less sloppy than this one. Besides, there’s something to be said for the incautious, needy way Louis kissing him. Liam kisses him back the same way, just letting himself melt into it as much as possible given the uncomfortable way he’s twisting his neck and the way Louis is starting to laugh.

“I feel like I should say thank you,” Louis says, settling back into his chair. After a moment, he slides it around the table so he’s right at Liam’s side. “For entertaining the idea of putting up with all of the shit that’s going to happen.”

Liam shakes his head, the words squeezing his heart. “Don’t,” he says. “I should be thanking you for not giving up on me when I gave up on speaking to just about everyone.” Now Louis shakes his head, and then tips it onto Liam’s shoulder.

“I could’ve made an effort,” he says. “Was pretty awful about doing that for a long time.”

Liam tips his head to the side, pressing his cheek to Louis’s hair. “I don’t want to do that again,” he says. “Didn’t make me feel particularly good about myself, and I missed everyone I was too scared to ring.”

Louis hums, a warm noise that Liam can practically feel. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m not going to let you.”

“Promise?” Liam says, and when Louis murmurs it back to him, Liam feels like a whole piece of his life he’d never even realised was missing settles right into place.

And then, naturally, the door opens and Lina comes tearing into the house, shrieking at the top of her lungs and startling them both into laughter.

—

It’s more than a week before there’s a night that Liam has his house to himself. Lina’s there, and then Bear’s over on the weekend, including the night Lina’s at her friend’s for a sleepover. But then Bear is back with Cheryl, and Lina’s got a long weekend with Sam, and he knows exactly how transparent it is when he asks Louis over for supper, and he doesn’t care at all.

Louis doesn’t seem to either, coming over early and not even pretending to ask if he should head home after they’ve eaten, just curling closer to Liam on the sofa as the night draws on. Liam does ask, eventually, but it feels unnecessary when he does it. And Louis laughs, low and sleepy, and just says, “Of course I am, you can’t get rid of me now.”

Liam’s not fully shaken the memory of all the years they just spent barely speaking, a few cursory birthday and Christmas text messages exchanged but otherwise not in each other’s lives at all. It’s hard to reconcile that with Louis here next to him, pressing an idle kiss to his shoulder, but they’re still the same people they were when they managed that. Older, certainly, and hopefully wiser, but not wholly different. Not so different that Liam isn’t going to fret. 

He might save the fretting for a time when Louis isn’t scraping his teeth across Liam’s pulse point, though.

Waking up in the half-light of far too early the next morning with Louis pressed fully up against his side and tucked neatly under his arm, Liam is suddenly reminded of the morning after they learned about Zayn leaving. He’d not managed to go back to sleep until after Harry finally put his mobile down, catching Liam’s eye and grinning sheepishly as he nestled his head in against Niall’s back.

In the morning, after entirely too few hours of sleep and well before it was truly light out, Liam had woken to the sound of Louis snoring faintly. Niall and Harry were still asleep too, tangled together. Liam was no better, with one of Louis’s ankles tucked between his calves and Louis’s hair falling nearly into his mouth. 

He remembers feeling oddly peaceful, despite all the chaos that he knew would be coming soon—the sounds of everyone breathing steadily, soft sleepy noises when they shifted. It was too early to be awake, though Liam hadn’t been certain he’d be able to go back to sleep. Not with visions of what the next few days would be like racing through his mind. The frantic changes to the staging and arrangements, because they needed to distribute Zayn’s parts of all the songs better, once it was settled that he wasn’t coming back, and they needed to make sure all the staging still works, and there would be interviews, fuck, there were going to be so many questions about it. Just lying there, thinking about the questions they were going to get and the answers they were going to have to give, answers that weren’t “well, you know, it fucking sucks,” had made Liam want to crawl all the way under the covers and not get out for a week.

Because, in fact, it did fucking suck, and he hadn’t wanted to have to be diplomatic about it.

He knew, even then, that none of the others would either. He knew as soon as it happened, as soon as they all crawled pathetically together into his bed, that none of them would be any good at being diplomatic. Liam didn’t want to be diplomatic, and he allowed himself a few moments of resenting the fact that he knew he wouldn’t let that show through in public. 

But in that moment, despite all the problems he needed to consider, Liam mostly remembers feeling calm, and secure, and, most of all, safe. Louis had been curled next to him, sound asleep and unlikely to wake any time soon, unless Liam poked at him. Harry and Niall were there too, comfortably nestled into the bed. The sounds of all of their breathing had comforted him, and the knowledge that they had all sought each other out to push through the deep sense of everything being in disarray had settled something deep in Liam’s stomach.

If they were still turning to each other for comfort, then they weren’t at the end yet. Liam wasn’t ready for it then. Even with all the bits that were starting to hurt, starting the grate against bits of him worn raw by the years of living the way they did, he wasn’t ready to try and be someone in the world on his own yet. 

“Hey,” Louis had whispered, startling Liam from his contemplation.

“Hi,” Liam whispered back. “I didn’t think you’d be awake for a good while yet.”

“‘M not sure I want to be,” Louis murmured, “But it seems that I am.”

“Don’t wake the others,” Liam said, and Louis nodded, slow and still clearly sleepy.

“What’re you awake for?” he asked, squirming so he was tucked even closer against Liam, nearly under Liam’s arm.

“Dunno,” Liam said softly, “Couldn’t get my mind to shut up long enough, I suppose.”

Louis made a displeased noise. “Did you sleep at all?” he asked, shifting again, this time just enough to be able to meet Liam’s eyes. His were heavy-lidded, drowsy but affectionate and warm too.

“A little,” Liam whispered. “Got a lot on my mind.”

“Tch,” Louis said. “You need your rest.” 

“So do you,” Liam said. He remembers so viscerally the way he’d reached up and let his fingers drag through Louis’s hair, the way he was completely unable to resist that urge. Louis’s hair was dirty, the ends tangled and the roots greasy, and Liam doubts he’ll ever forget the way Louis pressed into the touch.

“I’m not the one lying awake fretting,” Louis whispered. Liam didn’t exactly have grounds to argue with him, and was too groggy to do it anyway. “Budge up,” Louis said when Liam didn’t respond. “Come here, let me give you a cuddle.”

Somehow, they’d rearranged themselves so Liam was the one tucked under Louis’s arm, his face mashed against the soft cotton of Louis’s t-shirt. It had taken him ages to fall asleep, but he still remembers how much he’d relaxed, just listening to the sound of Louis breathing, the steady scratch of Louis’s fingers against the back of his head. 

Right before he fell asleep, Liam heard Louis whisper, “I promise I’m not going anywhere. Not unless you personally tell me to fuck off.” 

Even all these years later, he’s never been able to shake just how safe it made him feel just to hear Louis murmur that. He probably thought Liam was asleep and wouldn’t hear, and even if he knew Liam had heard, Liam would never have held him to it. It was enough that Louis felt compelled to say it, in that moment.

In the present, when Liam opens his eyes, Louis is still tucked up against him. It’s just the two of them, of course, and Louis looks older now, in all the obvious ways like the lines around his eyes and the handful of grey hairs that Liam can see when he’s this close, but also in ways Liam finds it harder to identify. The set of his face has changed, something about the way he carries himself that’s there even in sleep. Liam wants to reach out and touch his cheek, the bits of stubble beginning to show there. There’s a faint mark, barely visible in the pre-dawn light, that Liam’s never noticed before. Maybe Louis cut himself shaving, or maybe it was something else. Liam wishes he knew.

“Are you staring at me?” Louis asks, mumbled and rough. 

“No,” Liam says, a transparent lie. Louis just laughs at him. “Well, I might’ve been a bit.”

“That’s more like it,” Louis says. He’s smiling, though, and Liam kisses the corner of his mouth because he can. Louis makes a pleased noise about it, smug and satisfied. “What’s on your mind?” he asks.

“You,” Liam says, soft even though it feels like he’s setting the most raw and vulnerable piece of himself out in front of Louis for him to see and assess. “Do you remember the night after Zayn left, when we all crawled into the same bed like we were fresh off the X-Factor again?” Louis nods, frowning at Liam as he does it. 

“I got so drunk that night,” Louis says. “Probably not the best way of coping with that sort of thing, looking back.”

“We were young,” Liam says. “Not like I had any better ideas, back then.”

“Suppose not,” Louis says. “Can’t say I miss that, though. It’s nice to know better.”

Liam laughs, helpless, and kisses Louis’s forehead. When he pulls back, Louis’s mouth is curled into a small smile. “Do you remember the next morning, how you told me you promised you weren’t going anywhere?” Liam pauses, considers for a moment. “I think what you said last night reminded me of it.”

“About you not being able to get rid of me?” Liam hums. “I suppose if you told me to fuck off, that might get rid of me,” Louis says. “Can’t say I’m certain even that would work right now, though. Your bed is very comfortable.”

“Louis,” Liam says, a nudge to get him to take the question seriously. Louis taking a serious question a bit too lightly is comforting in its familiarity, though.

“Fine,” Louis says, shaking his head. “I don’t really remember saying it then, if I’m honest. That whole night is pretty blurry, and I remember waking up and whispering with you but not exactly what we talked about.”

It’s about the response Liam expected. He wants to duck his face against Louis’s shoulder before he says his next bit, spare himself the ordeal of being looked at while he admits it. But Louis deserves better than that, so Liam forces himself to almost look him in the eye.

“I thought about you saying that every time I got scared after that, until the band ended.”

Louis exhales loudly, a rough sigh that Liam can feel against his skin. “Liam,” he says softly, and he doesn’t follow it up with anything but a kiss to Liam’s forehead.

“Sometimes I think I couldn’t have managed any of it without you,” Liam mutters, more embarrassed by saying it aloud than he wishes he were.

“Hey,” Louis says. “I _know_ I couldn’t have managed any of it without you, so don’t act like that makes you special.” Liam snorts, amused and skeptical. Louis could have managed so much; he was a force of nature back then, unwilling to let anyone stop him once he’d got a taste of getting what he wanted.

In many ways, he still is. But it’s tempered now, more thoughtful and steadier and the things he wants aren’t quite so grand. 

“Glad we got to do it together,” Liam says. His voice wavers. Louis drapes an arm over his hip, pulling him in closer.

“Glad we get to do this together,” Louis says. “Rather thought it would just keep not being an option for one reason or another for the rest of our lives.”

Liam wants to kiss him again, roll him back against the mattress and keep kissing him until they forget anything but each other, but there’s something important—“I’m sorry I accused you of splitting up the band rather than dealing with anything,” he says. “I know that the cracks were already there and that we all needed the time apart.” 

Louis hums, thoughtful. “I know you didn’t mean it,” he says. “You’re nowhere near cruel enough to say something like that and actually mean it. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a bit true.” 

“Lou,” Liam says, his voice doing that terrible thing where he can feel it getting rough. Louis shakes his head.

“We all had our reasons,” Louis says. “And we did all need space, and I don’t feel particularly bad saying that one of the things I needed space from was the conspiracy theories and constantly fighting about how we were going to keep them from ruining our lives.”

“I shouldn’t have flung it at you like that,” Liam says, but he can feel in his bones that Louis is right. That Liam latched onto it as an accusation not just because of the potential for it to hurt but also for the grain of truth buried in it. 

“Probably not,” Louis agrees, but he’s smiling. “But it’s true that I needed space from all of you to get my head back on right about it. Turns out I needed kind of a lot of space.”

Liam laughs, and Louis curls closer against him. “Doesn’t feel like you’re getting a lot of space right now,” he points out, and Louis pokes him in the ribs. 

“Well I’m over it now, aren’t I?” Louis says. “Got my head on right and my priorities straight.”

“Oh?” Liam says, and Louis nods.

“First,” he says, “I’m going to kiss you, and then I’m thinking I’ll kiss you again, and after that I think I might suck you off—”

“Oh, shut up,” Liam says.

—

Louis goes to LA for two weeks, a long-planned trip to see Freddie and finalise a few of the songs he’s been working on for an American group he still refuses to tell Liam the name of. He hasn’t said there’s an NDA, either, so Liam’s giving it about a fifty percent chance he’s just being a wanker to seem mysterious. 

He comes by briefly before he leaves, just to say goodbye. It’s very much the sort of thing that a person does for someone they’re in a relationship with, not even for a close friend, and Liam’s honestly struggling to wrap his head around it even as Louis is standing in front of him. 

“I can’t stay long,” he says, giving a little shrug. It feels like he’s aiming for casual and missing it by a mile, which is alright with Liam because he doesn’t feel even the slightest bit casual about any part of this. He’s never been more serious about anything, except his kids. Not even music, if he’s honest. “I haven’t packed yet,” Louis adds by way of explanation. 

_Typical_ , Liam thinks, so fond he feels like it’s making him warm all over.

“It’s nice to see you before you go,” he says, because it is. Because Louis deserves to hear it.

Louis nods. His eyes are fixed on Liam’s face, like he’s trying to memorise him before he leaves. “I’ll miss you,” he says, and his voice is unsteady in a way that Liam knows means he’s emotional.

“We have about a thousand meetings about the tour,” he points out, but it feels cheap. “I’m going to miss you too.”

“That’s more like it,” Louis says, before he steps in close for a kiss.

It’s hardly a thorough goodbye, but it’s better than many Liam’s had in his life. And it’s only two weeks, and it’s Louis, and at the end of all this they’ll be going on tour together for weeks and weeks and weeks. 

Between meetings—and there are a lot of meetings, because the tour’s really coming up quickly and Louis being on another continent isn’t putting a stop to the planning—Liam wastes a lot of time puttering around his house, unable to find things to do with himself until he finally gives in and pulls out his notes from the last time he sat down to write. 

The lyrics still haven’t quite pulled together, though Liam is quite fond of the way he’s made the music take shape. The tone isn’t quite right, the way the ideas fit together. Liam scratches out half a verse—the part about how no one’s ever made the singer lie the way the object of the song has—and then rewrites it exactly as it was before. It feels like an important point, for some reason he hasn’t found how to articulate yet.

Louis always finessed the lyrics, turning Liam’s scraps and ideas into something that fully held together. Liam’d mostly given up on getting to show this song to him, having decided that even if they sorted their friendship out, it would be too raw. But now he’s not so certain—Louis’s shown him plenty of his roughest pieces, and Liam thinks he’d like the song. 

Liam thinks he’d like being asked to prod the lyrics into shape. It might even be a smooth way to bring up the whole idea they’d had of writing together.

Between thinking about that, and thinking about the writing itself, and trying not to think about how he’s going to have to update so many people on everything that’s happened, or at least the key details. His parents, his sisters, Alex, all the other people he works with. Maybe more people than that, eventually. The conversation with Alex alone is a lot to think about, more than enough to fill a big chunk of his time before the first of three meetings planning for the tour he’s got scheduled for today.

The first is with the band, and all their people. The second two are about Liam’s own family and how Lina and Bear are going to be looked after while he’s away. At least the band will be a lot easier than that. Most likely.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately given how much trouble it saves them in terms of figuring out how to start making announcements, Niall takes one look at Liam and Louis smiling in the videoconference and says, “So you two got yourselves sorted out, then?”

Liam can feel himself going red, and Louis’s cheeks are flushed too.

“Er,” he says, and then, because if he's honed his skills at anything, it’s answering questions when they need to be answered. “Yes, we have.”

Niall grins at them, and then Harry laughs, and there’s no one else on the call yet, thank god, but at the same time—of course there isn’t, because Niall would never have said anything if there was. 

“Glad to hear it,” Niall says. “Hope this means we can look forward to rehearsals not ending with screaming matches.”

Louis shrugs, all airy false casualness. “We’ll see what we can do.” Niall and Harry both laugh, so at least everyone’s taking it in the spirit it was clearly intended. “You two aren’t off the hook yet,” he adds, narrowing his eyes. “I hear there was plenty of meddling.”

“Off the hook for what?” Niall says. “Doing you a favour?”

Louis completely fumbles his response, taken aback by Niall’s cheerful agreement with the fact that meddling happened. Liam laughs, delighted at Louis being caught off guard, and things continue off the rails from there, with Harry suggesting an assortment of things Louis can do to even the metaphorical books back out. Something about a very fancy meal, which Louis is making progressively more and more disgusted comments about.

They’re all extremely giggly by the time that everyone else has logged on, all the people from their various labels and managers and publicists and everyone else. “Are we interrupting something?” someone whose name Liam can’t remember asks, and he catches himself tempted to shoot a guilty look around the room the way he did so many times when they got caught goofing around when they should have been acting like professionals.

It’s not the same, looking at faces in a computer screen, but at least they can still do this.

“No, no,” Niall says, waving the question off breezily. “Just trying to decide how Lou ought to provide payment for a favour he owes me. It can wait until we’ve got the rest of this sorted.”

Today’s the review of the schedule for the tour, including venues, lodging and travel plans. They’ll get written lists for a final approval afterward, and Liam’s often dreaded these types of conversations—it would be easier to just get the list, make notes, and send it back—but as with so many things, it’s easier when he’s got friends to laugh about it all with. Louis sends him a few illicit texts, making Liam’s mobile ding loudly before he realises what’s happening and silences it.

He keeps reading the messages, though. Louis is reminiscing about their previous trips to these cities, the hotels they stayed in and all the trouble they caused.

 _Maybe we’ll get into a different kind of trouble this time_ , the final message says, and Liam feels himself flushing.

When his mobile goes again, it’s from Harry. _Stop reading your dirty texts during our meeting_ , it says, and that just makes him blush more. If he doesn’t cut it out, more people than just Harry are going to comment on it. Liam turns his mobile over, forcing himself to not look at the screen any more until the meeting has ended, at which point he has about 20 messages from Louis, in varying degrees of obnoxious and demanding. 

Liam could ring him, since the last 4 are simply demanding that Liam acknowledge him in some way, but he remembers this game, the way he could work Louis into a furor by ignoring him when Louis wanted his attention. Somehow, Liam thinks the payoff will be even better now.

He settles himself at the piano to work out the bits of the melody of this song that are still fuzzy in his head, and waits for Louis to ring him. He doesn’t think it’ll be long.

—

And, indeed, he doesn’t wait long. He’s only just got himself settled into the chorus, trying out variations on the chords and some of the intervals, when his mobile buzzes loudly behind him. It’s Louis, of course, and he’s clearly put out that Liam didn’t answer him right away. Liam can’t keep himself from laughing, the annoyance in Louis’s voice so obvious that it’s impossible to contain himself.

“Are you laughing at me?” Louis says, immediately, his voice getting louder. 

“Might be,” Liam says, laughing even harder.

“For shame,” Louis says. “Laughing at me for wanting to talk to my own—you.”

“You’re an easy mark,” Liam says, the banter so familiar it’s like muscle memory. But he clocks the way Louis caught himself, stopped before he said something other than _you_. Liam rather likes the idea of belonging to Louis in any context, can’t help remembering the way Louis used to call Liam his boy and the shivery way that always made Liam feel. “I’m glad you rang, though,” he adds, softer. “I wanted to talk to you as well.”

“Yeah?” Louis says, and Liam can hear it there, the thread of nervousness, of self-consciousness, that he always worked so hard to hide and never quite succeeded at. The worry that people don’t like him. So many years ago, it had been one of the things that really allowed them to connect, once they’d got past the initial friction.

“Yeah,” Liam says. “I always want to talk to you. Always have, even when—” he cuts himself off. It’s such a silly, trivial thing to say to someone you’ve shared so many more intimate feelings with but then, he’s already started.

“Even when what?” Louis says, his voice picking up.

Liam clears his throat. “Even when I wasn’t in love with you.”

“Oh,” Louis breathes. “Is that what you are now?”

“Of course,” Liam says. “Don’t know how to be anything else, really. Not when you’re, well, yourself.” 

When Louis says his name, Liam actually shivers. It reminds him so suddenly and so viscerally of the way Louis said his name only a few nights ago, spread out across Liam’s mattress and half out of his mind from Liam sucking him off. Perhaps he’ll tell Louis that later.

“Is that so?” Louis asks, and if he’s aiming for playful he doesn’t quite hit it. Mostly he sounds genuinely touched. Liam’s pretty alright with it. “I’m that great?”

“Absolutely,” Liam says, and Louis hums a soft response, seeming pleased, and then he goes quiet. 

“I’ve got this song,” Liam says, into the silence a few moments later. He’s a little sorry to do it, because there’s something so wonderfully comforting about sitting there listening to Louis breathe quietly, but he wants Louis to know this. Louis needs to know this, about Liam, about Liam’s heart, about what Liam’s been doing with himself over the last months. Besides, he’s already started telling Louis everything he doesn’t yet know. 

“Oh?” Louis says, perkier than he was a moment ago.

“I”ve been working on it for a while,” Liam says. “I wasn’t ready to share it until just a few days ago, but I’d like you to hear it.” He pauses, shrugs even though Louis can’t see him. “Er, and if you’d like to take a stab at cleaning up some of the lyrics, I think that would be good.”

If they were FaceTiming, Liam might be able to see Louis grinning. As it is, he can practically hear it in Louis’s voice. “You want me to help you write?”

“Always,” Liam says. “I kept thinking about how you’d be able to help with this one even when I was certain I’d never let you hear it.” He takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. “I kept thinking that the lyrics weren’t quite right and that if we were working together you’d be able to fix them. You always did manage to take the things I started and turn them into the best versions of themselves.”

“Liam,” Louis says, all soft and warm and perhaps just a little bit rough, like he’s emotional as well. “Send me the song, won’t you?”

Liam does, of course. 

Writing over the phone’s not the same as writing in person, even when Louis switches them to a FaceTime call and props the phone up on the stand of his piano. He’s got Liam’s song playing on another mobile right next to it, which he evidently has because it’s useful to have an American number while he’s there, and Liam can just hear the tinny sound of it, unpolished even in its cleanest form.

Louis’s already frowned twice, mouthing something to himself during the chorus, and Liam feels a surge of familiar anxiety. Louis might not like the song, he might have to take it apart fully and remake it into something else for it to be good. 

Liam’s almost surprised when he realises that he isn’t at all concerned about the actual meaning of the song. There’s nothing in the words that he doesn’t already want Louis to know.

“This is lovely,” Louis says when he’s played the whole thing through. “Makes me want to sort my whole life out.” He shrugs, his mouth twisting a little into a smile. “Not to sound like I’m up myself but, er, is it—?”

Liam cuts him off before he can even finish the question. “‘Course it is,” he says, trying to keep his voice light. “What else would I be writing a song like that about these last few months?”

“Dunno,” Louis says, shrugging. “Didn’t want to make assumptions.”

“Make as many as you like,” Liam says. “I suspect they’ll mostly be right.”

Louis laughs. His face has always been expressive, especially to Liam since he’s been able to read Louis’s emotions for so long, but somehow the faint lines make it even more so. Liam would very much like to be able to slide the pads of his fingers across them.

“Well then,” Louis says. “I think this song would make a lovely duet. The emotions don’t quite pull together neatly enough for one singer, but I think with only a little tweaking it could be two people singing to each other.”

Liam inhales, startled by the idea even as he realises that it makes perfect sense. That’s exactly the problem he was having, but framed this way it’ll be much easier to fix.

“If you like, I’ll make a few edits and then we can give it a go with two voices?” Louis says, and Liam’s stomach does a backflip like the person he fancies has asked him to go to the cinema instead of his—well, whatever Louis is asking him to do an extremely basic demo of a song together.

“I’d like that,” Liam says, his voice embarrassingly weak.

“Good,” Louis says, with a grin that seems to stretch from ear to ear on him. “It’ll take me a couple of days, I think, I’ve got a bunch of things planned with Freddie today and tomorrow.”

Liam waves his hand dismissively. “Don’t miss out on time with Freddie for this, it’s not like I’ve got a deadline to turn it in to anyone. It’s just a favour for me.” Besides, that’s what Louis is saying, but his fingers are already picking out notes on the piano, and Liam can see that it’s going to be on his mind. 

Louis tilts his head, his brow furrowed just a bit. If he wasn’t halfway across the world, Liam might kiss the little line on his forehead. 

“We’d talked about writing together again,” Louis says. “I was gutted when I thought that wasn’t going to happen.”

“Me too,” Liam says. “But it is it a good idea for us to do that when we’re also—” He cuts himself off, abruptly stumbling on the words he ought to say. “Lou, what are we doing?” he says.

Louis looks up abruptly from where he’s had his gaze—probably on the piano keys—and bites his lip. “I don’t know,” he says. Liam waits a moment, to see if he’s going to say more, if Louis is once again going to be the one who reaches toward him, covers the distance between them with an offer of friendship, or professional partnership, or—something else.

He doesn’t, just bites his lip again. Liam stares at it for entirely too long, even small and slightly distorted from the phone camera. He ought to be the one who does something this time, an offered piece of himself that’s more like a promise than a suggestion.

“I don’t either,” he finally says. “But, er, I’ve got a lot of ideas of what I’d like it to be eventually that are probably me getting ahead of myself.” Louis is smiling at him, now, his cheeks slightly pink. Liam likes him _so_ much. “But nothing feels right for this right now.”

“The part where we sort out how it’s all going to work?” Louis says. “It really doesn’t, does it?”

Liam laughs. “It’s not like we’re going on dates or anything.”

“We could,” Louis says, his voice more careful. “But maybe we haven’t got to call it anything in particular yet. The people who need to know will understand, and we can deal with the others later. Might be we’ve got a way to talk about it sorted by the end of the tour.”

He’s got a point. It’s coming up so soon that there’s no need to make big announcements beforehand. They can use it to feel this out between themselves, find the ways they can make themselves fit together like this, as a couple, before they invite the rest of the world in to gawk at them.

“I suppose we don’t yet,” Liam says. “We can figure out what feels right later.”

Louis grins, and then it slips into something more like a leer. “I think we’ve already figured out quite a few things that feel right.”

Liam feels himself go scarlet, and Louis just laughs delightedly. “You’ve got two kids,” he says. “I shouldn’t be able to make you blush so easily.”

Liam splutters, making an utterly useless hand gesture. “It’s _you_ ,” is all he manages, which isn’t particularly detailed or coherent or, for that matter, a reason that won’t give Louis plenty to tease him for. But mostly Louis just seems pleased, maybe even so pleased with himself about having got Liam to say things like that that he isn’t even interested in making fun. It’s strange to think that Liam isn’t the only one who feels infinitely more settled by just the acknowledgement that they’ve both got this desire to get ahead of themselves, that they’re thinking as much about what this could be as what it is right now.

Louis clears his throat. “You know I’ve been completely, stupidly in love with you for ages, right?” he says. “Not the whole time, I suppose, but I was for a good while in the band and I am now.”

Liam swallows past a sudden lump in his throat, trying to find something he can articulate in words about it. All he manages is “Louis,” said in a hoarse whisper that barely makes it out of his throat.

“I was a wreck about everything by the end, and confused about what I wanted in about a thousand ways,” Louis continues. “And being absolutely off my head for you didn’t help at all, especially once I knew the break was coming, but none of that ever made me like you less or want to kiss you less.”

“Louis,” he says again, more forcefully this time, and Louis makes a startled noise. “Too much?” he says, sounding sad. “I know we’ve only just started this, but—”

“No,” Liam says. “It’s just I don’t think you should say things like that when I can’t kiss you. It’s not fair.”

Louis raises his eyebrows. “You wrote a song about me and sent it to me when I was on the other side of the world. Turnabout is fair play.”

“It most certainly is not,” Liam says, but Louis is just laughing and that sets him off as well.

Before he ends the call, Louis whispers, “I couldn’t have imagined you either, but I’m glad it happened,” down the line, and Liam can’t find anything to respond to that with before the line goes silent.

At least two weeks isn’t all that long.

— 

Harry and Niall already know, but it still feels like something of an announcement when Louis curls his hand around Liam’s wrist on Harry’s front step before he rings the bell. 

When he answers the door, Harry’s got a little smile on his face, and his eyes catch on it, Louis’s fingers loose but extremely present, pressing just a bit against where he’ll be able to feel Liam’s pulse. “Well,” Harry says, and then, “Come in, Niall’s already in the back.”

Louis doesn’t drop his hand until they’re in the studio and he’s reaching for one of the dozen guitars Harry’s got leaning against the walls of the room. Niall glances up from where he’s picking at what appears to be a banjo. Why Harry has a banjo, Liam isn’t sure, but it doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. 

Harry invited them over with the express purpose of having an evening to just play around before the final stretch of serious rehearsals begins, where they’ll be having to finalise the arrangements of everything and make sure all the variations on the setlist are nailed down and come up with backup plans for about a thousand things.

It’s not that Liam isn’t going to enjoy that, because he likes having plenty to do, but there’s a lot to be said for the part of this work that’s a bit less structured. The part where you get to sit around with some mates and play music until something comes out of it that you all like. No one’s said it yet, but Liam thinks this might not be the last time they do this, all four of them.

He knows it won’t be the last time he does it with Louis, who winks at him before he plays a few chords of the song Liam wrote that he’s been refining slowly. 

“What’s that?” Niall says immediately, his fingers stilling on the banjo strings. “Sounds new.”

Louis glances at Liam, who nods at him. “Been working on a bit of a new thing,” he says. “Liam wrote most of it but he asked for my help polishing it up.”

“Oh really?” Niall says. “He did?” He looks pleased, which makes Liam’s stomach go all warm and pleased.

“I did,” Liam says. “It just came to me all of a sudden a few months back and it felt like I needed to get it all out.”

Everyone else just nods, like that’s something they understand. Makes sense that they would, given the things they’ve all written. “Been a while since I had that feeling,” Liam admits. “Was quite nice, though.”

“Sometimes you just get inspired,” Harry says, sounding like he’s trying to sound very sage. Might have landed more if he was talking to a group of people who were more easily impressed by him, but he is right. Sometimes you do just get inspired.

Liam glances at Louis, getting a tiny, private smile in return. He can feel Harry and Niall’s eyes flicking over to them as they do it, and he resists the urge to grin sheepishly at the floor. “You’re right,” he says to Harry. “Found I rather missed the feeling of just needing to get a melody out of my head.”

Niall smiles, thoughtful. “It happens to me more often when I’m already working a lot with music.” It’s said softly, not meant as a pointed thing, but Liam feels the sharpness of it anyway—he didn’t entirely bring it on himself by slowly filtering all the music from his life, but it didn’t help him either. Harry and Louis are nodding, and Liam does too.

“Makes sense,” he says. “Hoping I have more flashes of inspiration now that I’ll be doing more other writing.”

That derails them for a few minutes. Harry and Niall, who’d both been so careful and polite about Liam and Louis showing up with their hands laced together, take that as open season to bombard them with questions. Liam’s barely got answers for half of them, all the details not ironed out yet. 

“How do I get this crack songwriting team to write for me?” Harry asks, grinning, and Louis grins back at him. There’s an ease to it that wasn’t there a few months ago, settling comfortably into Liam’s bones.

“Er, I’d wait until I’ve talked to Alex about it, to start,” Liam says. That sets off the laughing again, and the questions. Liam holds his hands up in surrender. “I’m telling her this week, I just didn’t have a chance.”

Niall narrows his eyes. “Because you were too busy with what? Writing? Things I’d rather not think about?”

There’s a beat of silence, during which Louis has a look on his face like he’s going to try to rile Niall on purpose and Harry has a look like he’s considering whether he should make up an excuse to leave the room. 

“If it’s all the same to you, Lou, I’d rather Niall not know either,” Liam says, aiming for diplomatic and landing somewhere closer to “trying not to laugh.”

“Thank you, Liam,” Harry says. “Your discretion is appreciated.”

Louis mouths “traitor” at Liam, and then turns back to Harry and Niall. “If you must know, we’ve been busy working on Liam’s song.” It’s not the entirety of the truth, but it’s the more acceptable portion to be sharing. Niall looks skeptical, but no one asks any more questions.

No one asks if to hear the song, either, but in a sudden fit of openness, Liam says, “We could play it when it’s a bit more tidied up. Could even do a few bars now, if you two would like.”

Even Louis looks surprised by that, but he smiles. “Could do,” he says.

“If you’re alright with it, of course,” Liam says, but Louis is already nodding.

“It’ll be good to have some other ears, see how we feel with other people hearing it,” he says. “Sometimes it just feels different the first time you put it out there for someone else.”

Harry and Niall sit politely, their hands folded in their laps and clearly listening. It feels oddly formal, especially after the way they used to play new songs for each other in the band—sprawled half on top of each other, or around hotel rooms, playing bad recordings from each other’s mobiles and singing from terrible angles.

It wasn’t that they didn’t take it seriously, it was just that the seriousness of the music went without saying. They didn’t need to make a production of it, not when they were so certain that they were all on the same page.

Louis plays a few bars on the guitar he’s holding, working it out in his head since they’ve done most of the writing at a piano, and then Liam joins in, singing the new bridge they worked out together at half voice. “I’m ready to step in out of the cold, ready to let you have my hand to hold.” Louis joins in on the last lines. “You made me into someone new, so let me spend my days with you.”

Saying it aloud, to people who will absolutely understand exactly what it’s about, is raw in a way Liam hadn’t really thought to expect, but Louis smiles at him in that way he has that makes every risk Liam’s ever taken feel worth it.

After, Louis grabs his hand again, and for a moment Liam truly considers tugging their joined hands to his lips to kiss Louis’s knuckles. It feels like a step too far, in this already oddly intimate moment for the four of them, so he just squeezes back. “Thanks,” he mouths at Louis, and Louis just smiles at him.

“That was lovely,” Niall says.

“Thanks,” Liam says, this time aloud. “I think that’s going to end up as the bridge, but there’s a lot of pieces and we haven’t quite sorted how it all works together.”

“Are you going to perform it?” Harry asks him. “When it’s finished, I mean.” Liam shrugs.

“Hadn’t thought much about it, to be honest,” he says. “We’ve mostly talked about the writing side, not so much if we want to go back into performing. Er, aside from this, of course.”

“Of course,” Harry says. He’s grinning, dimpled, and Niall is smiling more demurely, his hands still in his lap despite the banjo sitting at his feet. Liam admires his restraint, to be that close to something he could strum and not just do it unthinkingly. 

“Well, it’s a great song either way,” Niall says, and Liam tries not to preen too obviously, despite how pleased he is to get praise heaped on him.

They spend a while after that playing scraps of new things and old things, and talking with an openness that Liam didn’t expect about what they’d do differently on the songs they wrote for the band, if they were writing them for the first time now. It’s a fun mental exercise, to incorporate their styles now into things they created so long ago, fiddling with the keys and the chord progressions and, in some cases, the whole structures of the songs. As ways to spend an afternoon go, Liam can think of a lot worse. One or two of the reworked songs might even make it into the setlist, one of the ones where it’s just the arrangement that’s been tweaked, slipped sideways into a new sound instead of a whole new structure.

The afternoon winds down naturally, and Liam’s just about ready to head out when Niall says something about having dinner plans. Louis gives him a look, just on the edge of a leer, and Liam tries not to smirk when Niall looks like he’s been caught out. So it is a date, then, even if Niall’s not ready to admit to everyone yet.

Liam will nag him about it later, send a few obnoxious texts that it’s rude to keep secrets, especially after he and Louis have managed to resist the temptation to sneak around. Niall will give some impeccably articulated reason he hasn’t told anyone else yet, even though Liam knows him well enough to know it’s a half-truth at best. It’s hard to step back from holding something precious close to your chest where you can keep it safe, untouched by the world.

Liam and Louis leave together, to a chorus of suggestive comments from Harry and Niall, lingering to tidy up the music room even as Harry insists it’s not necessary, that make Liam blush and Louis turn around just to make several rude gestures at them. 

“In such a hurry to get each other alone that they can’t even stay for an after-dinner drink,” Harry stage-whispers as the door closes behind them, and Liam struggles to contain his laughter.

“It’s nice to have supportive friends,” he says, deadpan. Louis presses up onto the balls of his feet to kiss Liam’s temple.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, yeah?” he murmurs against Liam’s cheek. “I want your help with some of the new stuff I’ve got to work on.”

“‘Course,” Liam says. “Just let me know when you’re on your way.”

“How early is too early?” Louis asks, and Liam just laughs, shaking his head.

“There’s no way you’ll be up before Lina.”

Louis winks at him, glancing around them quickly before he steals a kiss. “Try me,” he says.


	4. epilogue: gonna win this time

They wrap up the European leg of the tour at the O2, a feat which took a bit of finagling in terms of scheduling but they mutually agreed would be well worth it. They’d also managed to wrangle a tour schedule that didn’t start until after the new year, with a few performances scheduled through November and December to get a certain level of excitement built up.

It’s oddly both familiar and not, the four of them banding together for the most reasonable schedule they can imagine. Well, really the main difference is how much more reasonable of a schedule they _can_ imagine now. No one who’s waited fifteen years for a reunion tour is going to be put off by waiting another six weeks—it’s a smaller group of people who are interested now, of course, but they’ve stuck it out this long.

And, of course, it means they can all have their families and friends and whoever all else there.

Ending a tour, even just a leg of one, is always a particular kind of emotional experience. You put your whole heart into everything on stage, because there’s time to recover and you don’t have to do it again in just a few days, and then afterward you feel more than a bit wrung out, like there’s a piece of you out there that you might never get back, just flung into the screaming crowd for them to devour.

Liam can feel the way he’s clinging when he’s pulled into a hug after the final encore, the final notes of History still reverberating through the arena around them. He can hear the crowd screaming, muffled by his in-ears but not drowned out entirely, and he can hear the other lads screaming in his ear as their arms pull at him. The adrenaline comedown is going to be brutal but right now Liam just wants to scream too, to fill up the piece of himself that feels hollowed out by how much he put into the songs tonight.

“We killed it,” Niall is saying, his voice hoarse, and dulled in Liam’s ears by how loud everything’s been all night. Louis slaps him on the back, hard enough that Liam feels briefly winded. Harry kisses the top of his head. It’s a start.

And then, as soon as they’re backstage, Louis slips his hand into Liam’s and squeezes it, and maybe it won’t be so hard to get that feeling of wholeness back as it was when he was younger.

“Good show tonight,” Louis says. “Always good to end on a high note.”

“Hardly the end,” Liam murmurs. “We’ve got three more legs of the tour to go.”

“You know what I mean,” Louis says. “Don’t be a nerd.”

Liam wants to linger for a few minutes backstage before they shuffle off to their dressing rooms. It was a great crowd tonight, and he wants to bask in it for a bit longer, listening to the people slowly filtering out of the arena, the thousands of conversations all blending with the music into a dull roar that he finds surprisingly comforting. Louis stays with him, their fingers laced together.

Eventually, as the sound fades, Liam’s desperate need to drink an inhuman amount of water gets the better of him, and he nudges Louis deeper into the bowels of the arena. Harry and Niall are already in the shared room, Harry already changed out of his show clothes and into an extremely ragged pair of joggers. Niall is simply not wearing a shirt, his hair sticking up like he pulled it off only moments ago. 

Everyone they invited to see them tonight will probably be making it back here fairly soon, and Liam wonders if he ought to say something to Niall but decides that it’s on him to make those choices for himself.

Lina and Bear were in the audience, of course, though Lina’s starting to fade by the time Sam leads her back to the dressing rooms, Alex quick on her heels, Bear shuffling behind both of them. Lina’s dragging her feet, but she’s really too big now to be carried. Liam could do it, hoist her up onto his hip and let her slump against his shoulder, but even he won’t be able to keep her there for long before he gets tired. 

“Come here,” he says to her, and he gestures to Bear as well, and they both fold up against him so he can hug them. Bear’s got so tall, his head comfortably past Liam’s shoulder already. Lina’s too sleepy to do anything but stay nestled against Liam’s side, but Bear slips away quickly; _teenagers,_ Liam thinks, but he’s actually saying hi to other people.

Liam likes the bit of this where the pieces of his life are meshing together more. He wishes his parents were joining them, but they’ve already called it a night and he and Louis will see them tomorrow. Right now, Niall’s chatting with Alex, and Bear’s talking to Harry. Alex catches Liam’s eye past Niall, grinning at him as Louis touches Lina’s shoulder softly. Louis leans to murmur in Liam’s ear about what the venue just told him about a timeframe for the crowds clearing. 

“Thanks,” Liam whispers back, tilting his head so it rests against Louis’s for just a moment. Louis’s already moved on to talking to Lina, asking her how much longer she’s going to be able to hang with them.

She scowls, insisting that she’s not sleepy yet. Unfortunately for her, she’s a terrible liar at the best of times, and at this particular time she follows up the claim with a massive yawn. Louis, very diplomatically, does not comment on it.

“Did you have a good time?” he asks instead, and she nods vigorously. 

Liam slips away from them, to make sure he’s talking to everyone he ought to be talking to, but it’s not long before he’s circled back around to where Bear has rejoined Louis and Lina, and this time when he steps close enough, Louis reaches for his hand.

Over the last months, Liam’s found he’s learned a lot about Louis’s commitment to gestures like that. In a way, it’s funny—it makes the idea of Louis ever managing to keep a relationship fully secret much more laughable. Mostly, Liam just enjoys the affection, the same bombardment of it he’s always experienced from Louis except both intensified and settled. Like Louis’s hasn’t got anything more to be trying to get from him. 

It makes Liam feel extremely safe, how easily Louis seems to take his hand at the slightest provocation.

Louis was right, as he often is, and after a couple months of living out of each other’s pockets, it does feel like they’ve found something they can be comfortable with. There’s no public announcement planned, but Louis doesn’t tug his hand out of Liam’s as families filter in, not even when it’s new people, the ones they don’t know so well. Niall’s lady, for one, smiling nervously as she tucks neatly under his arm—at least Niall found a shirt to put on—but also a couple of friends of Harry’s he introduces cheerfully. Liam feels it when people’s eyes catch on Louis’s hand, so tight against his that it’s almost clammy, but he keeps his breathing steady and Louis doesn’t let go.

He’s chatted with Aine a few times on FaceTime, as there’s never a lot of privacy to be had on a tour, but seeing her in person, smiling at Niall every time she lays eyes on him—Liam likes that, likes seeing the people he loves being loved by others too. He’ll tell Niall, later, that maybe he kept the secret too long but that it was worth it to be sure things would work out.

Liam’s about to mention they could see if it’s calmed down enough outside for them to head out, and suggest that they could all come to his for a nightcap, if anyone’s interested, when his mobile goes. He’s already glanced at most of the messages he got during the concert, so he pulls it out of his pocket out of sheer curiosity about who might be texting him.

Of all the people in the world he could have guessed, he didn’t expect to see a message from Zayn, _good show_ appearing on his lock screen as soon as it unlocks. He doesn’t know what to make of it, despite all the steps they’ve taken recently. It feels almost momentous, the simple acknowledgement of it. Of _this_.

 _you came?_ he sends back, mildly disbelieving. Louis is giving him a look, probably because of the way he’s frowning at his mobile.

Liam shows him the messages, and his eyebrows shoot up. But he doesn’t look angry, the way he would have so many years ago and, after all, Louis was the one who started this all.

Even now, after all these months of rebuilding things, Liam’s still blown away by how much they’ve all grown up sometimes.

 _thought it might be fun, to see how the four of you do it_ flashes up on his phone screen. 

_glad you liked it_ , Liam replies. Zayn sends back a smiling face, and Liam lets the exchange end there. Still, he likes the knowledge that, whatever comes of all of this, at least there’s less animosity than there was before. He’s not expecting friendship again, but something like a truce feels like a real improvement. Even if it’s just for him, not for all of them.

It’s freeing, Liam realises, to not worry about fixing other people’s relationships. He can manage his own, and let everyone else take responsibility for themselves. He got so used to the idea of himself as someone who papers over all the cracks and keeps everything running smoothly that it’s almost jarring to look back at all that effort and decide that maybe it was worthwhile at the time, but that he doesn’t need to do that anymore. 

No one who matters is going to give up on him for it, least of all Louis.

The four of them do end up at Liam’s, in the end. It takes a lot more wrangling than it did when they were younger, more goodbyes and arranging of evenings, and Liam still has to get Bear to go to bed after they’re all there. He leaves Louis pawing through his refrigerator while Harry and Niall bicker about whether it’s worth paying someone to bring them more beer. 

Liam’s not sure Bear’s actually going to sleep, but he’s in his bedroom with the light off, and there’s not much more Liam can do beyond that. If he’s going to stay up until all hours playing whatever new game he’s got on his mobile, well, he’s the one who’ll regret it in the morning. He’s old enough to feel the consequences of his own actions.

Louis’s got his head out of the refrigerator by the time Liam emerges, but he’s been replaced by Niall, providing an extended commentary on the state of Liam’s beer selection—for which Louis is mostly responsible, though he doesn’t seem to be openly taking the credit or the blame—and also on the state of Liam’s tupperware containers. Harry is just laughing at the whole scene, a large glass of water on the counter next to where he’s leaning.

“You lot should head into the sitting room,” Liam says. “It’s farther from the bedrooms, and if Bear can hear us there isn’t even the slightest chance he’ll actually go to sleep.”

Even more than the concert being at the O2, even more than knowing his family was in the crowd, it feels right to wind the night down with the four of them sat on the floor of Liam’s living room, legs stretched out in front of them. They’re entirely too old for it, and if he’s honest, Liam’s already feeling it in his back. It’s not enough to convince him to get up and sit on the sofa. There’s something intimate about this, the closeness and the comfort and the informality of it.

“Been a long time since I was this hyped up at the end of a tour,” Harry says. He’s smiling, crooked and tired, and there’s a bottle of beer dangling loosely from his hand. “God, remember what a relief it was when we finished up our last tour in the band?”

Liam nods, because there are few things he remembers quite so viscerally. The relief of it, the way it felt like a weight had lifted right off his shoulders. The knowledge that he didn’t have to do that again for—well, for as long as he wanted. He remembers feeling nearly drunk with it, even when he hadn’t had anything to drink.

This doesn’t feel anything like that at all.

He’s looking forward to being at home for a few weeks, of course. He’s missed his kids, missed his own bed in a way he isn’t sure he knew he could. It’ll be nice to see his parents, check up on how much his nieces have grown, wear the clothes he didn’t bring with him and now misses desperately. But he’s not dreading getting back out on the road, either. He’ll be ready for it when it comes, and he knows he’ll see all of them plenty in the meantime.

Louis especially.

“I was so glad we were getting a real break,” Louis says, laughing. “I think that night if someone had told me I had to pick between doing another tour the next year and never seeing any of you again I’d have picked never seeing any of you again.” He clears his throat. “Don’t take that the wrong way.”

Niall shakes his head. “Mate, I think I’d have made the same choice.”

Liam nods, silent, and then so does Harry. “I was too exhausted to even think about it,” Liam says.

“Likewise,” Harry says. “This is loads better,” he adds. “I could do this again in, I dunno, a few weeks? Want to catch up on sleep, but after that I think I’ll be good to go.”

Liam raises his beer bottle, only about half empty, in Harry’s general direction. He hasn’t really got anything to add to that, but he’s happy to agree with Harry. Saves him the trouble of having to figure out how to put it all into words. 

“Good thing we are doing this again in a few weeks,” Niall says, laughing. “Agree with Harry, though. I feel pretty good.”

“Good,” Louis says. He sounds extraordinarily pleased with himself, and Liam’s sure it’s because this was what he wanted all along. He executed the plan beautifully, or maybe they all executed it for him. 

In all honesty, Liam’s still not sure how all the pieces came together so well. He’s not sure how it happened twenty years ago at the X-Factor, and he’s also not sure how it happened all over again this time. There’s a lot of clichés people use to talk about things like this, lightning striking twice and whatall, but none of them feel quite right.

Maybe it’s best to not think too hard about it, and just enjoy that he’s got to have it twice over. Maybe more, if the rest of the tour goes this well. 

Liam’s arse has gone numb from too long on the floor by the time he starts to feel really drowsy, even on the plush carpet he has. Louis is next to him, clearly fading because he’s tilting closer and closer to Liam’s shoulder. Liam curls an arm around him, tugging him in and pressing a kiss to the top of his head when it settles against him.

“Cute,” Niall says. He’s only glanced up for a moment from his mobile, where he’s been texting furiously for several minutes now. Liam suspects it’s his girlfriend, given the hour.

“Are you planning to bail on us?” Harry asks, his voice wry.

“Absolutely,” Niall says. 

“Disgusting,” Harry says. “All these couples around me.” He sounds too pleased for the deadpan to really land, but Niall aims a very halfhearted kick at him anyway.

Liam just lets himself slump against Louis, tilting his head awkwardly to rest it fully on top of Louis’s.

“Is that my cue?” Harry asks, and the wryness is gone from his voice. It’s all warmth now.

“Might be,” Louis mumbles. Liam kisses the top of his head again. Harry pushes himself to his feet, groaning as he does it.

“‘M getting too old for that,” he says. Louis flips him off, but Liam doesn’t think his eyes are open because it isn’t aimed quite right. 

“Go to bed, old man,” Harry says. Niall looks up, mildly alarmed.

“Is Louis going to kill him?” he asks Liam.

Liam doesn’t want to shake his head and disrupt Louis. “I think Lou’s asleep,” he says.

“Not sleep,” Louis mumbles. It’s not particularly convincing.

“I think I’m going to call it a night, just to be safe,” Harry says. “He might get a second wind.”

As he leaves, Niall hot on his heels, Harry pats Louis on the head and then kisses Liam on the cheek. Louis mumbles a sleepy “Where’s mine?” which gets him a kiss from Harry as well, and then Niall laughs and just pats both of them on the head. 

“See you sleepyheads in a few days,” he says. “Will the door lock behind me?”

Liam hums a yes. It’s several more minutes before he manages to coax himself and Louis to their feet so they can shuffle to his bedroom, and the leaves the bottles to deal with in the morning, momentarily grateful that Lina’s with Sam so he doesn’t have to worry about her playing with them at the crack of dawn.

When he and Louis collapse into bed, it feels like a thousand nights they did the same in identical hotels, too drunk to stand up for another moment longer, except that as soon as he hits the mattress and Louis curls up against his side, Liam feels like he’s overflowing with contentment in a way he isn’t sure he’s ever felt before. 

In the morning, Louis wakes Liam by poking him in the back of the neck until he rolls over. Liam mildly regrets not brushing his teeth before he collapsed into the bed, but not enough to not kiss Louis good morning. 

It’s still too early for Bear to be up, so they have some time before they need to drag themselves into the kitchen and make sure there’s some kind of food prepared so he doesn’t just eat crisps for breakfast. Later, Lina will come back from Sam’s and Liam will have to nag her into doing her homework, or maybe Louis will do that and Liam will be the one keeping an eye on Bear to make sure he isn’t playing on his mobile when he ought to be reading his textbook. Alex and her family are coming by for dinner, which means everything else needs to get done a little earlier than usual, despite last night’s excitement. 

Louis kisses him again, and Liam decides that he’s not going to think about any of that quite yet. There’s plenty to look forward to later, but for right now he’s got this.

“Good morning,” Louis says, muffled from how close he is to Liam’s mouth. His voice is rough, and his breath is as bad as Liam’s, and Liam doesn’t care at all.

“Good morning,” Liam says.

_"Life is about choosing people. It’s about choosing people when people are just so hard to choose."_

_— Hannah Brencher_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Further elaboration on warnings: this story includes brief mentions of parent death and sibling death, and alludes to past alcohol abuse. It also deals in a fair amount of detail with what I can only summarize as the psychological effects of being the target of a homophobic conspiracy theory for well over a decade. This is what leads to behavior that seems like internalized homophobia but in fact has a different cause.


End file.
